The St. John's Review Volume XL, number two ( 1990-91)

Editor Elliott Zuckerman

Editorial Board Eva Brann Beate Ruhm von Oppen Joe Sachs Cary Stickney John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson

Subsc1iptions Assistant Louis Lucchetti

The St.John's Review is published three times a year by the Office ofthe Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis; Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva Brann, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stmies, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available, at $5.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.

©1991 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

ISSN 0277-4720

Desktop Publishing and Printing The St. John's College Print Shop

Contents

St. John's "For Ever" Charlotte Fletcher

m Editor ',s Preface

IV Author's Preface I One: King William's School and the College of William and Mm-y 15...... Two: An Endowed King William's School Plans to Become a College 29...... Three: King William's School Survives the Revolution 43...... Four: 1784: The Year St. Jolm's College was Named 59...... Five: John McDowell, Federalist: President of St. John's College 69 Notes

87 Results of St. John's Crossword Number One

89...... St. John's Crossword Number Two Trout

Editor's Preface

Charlotte Fletcher was the Librarian of St. John's College from 1944 to 1980. The five essays that appear in this issue are somewhat revised versions of essays that were first published separately in the Maryland Historical Magazine, as follows:

"1784: The Year St. John's College was Named." Vol. 74 (1979), pp. 133-51.

"King William's School and the College of William and Mary." Vol. 78 (1983), pp. 118-28.

"King William's School Plans to Become a College." Vol. 80 (1985), pp. 157-66.

"King William's School Survives the Revolution." Vol. 81 (1986), pp. 210-21.

"John McDowell, Federalist: President of St. John's College." Vol. 84 (1989), pp. 242-51.

We thank the Mmyland Historical Magazine for permission to reprint them. It is, we think, useful to have them all within one set of covers.

E.Z.

iii Author's I Preface

There was a time when those of us who were expected to answer queries about the early history of St. John's College depended on undocumented histories and on two articles by Tench Francis Tilghman that appeared in the Maryland Historical Mal',azine in June 1949 and June 1950. Tilghman's book, The Early History of St. John's College, was not published until 1984. He refers often to the Archives of Maryland, the Minutes of the Visitors and Governors, the Maryland Gazette, the Maryland Senate Journal, and the House Journal. His research led him to question the connection between King William's School and St. John's College. He found no answer to the persistent question of why St. John's was named St. John's; nor was he sure about the details of John McDowell's early appointment to the faculty and the presidency of the College. He raised questions that I hoped to answer. During the tricentennial celebration of Anne Arundel County in 1949, Mr. and Mrs. Robert G. Henry had allowed the College to exhibit a series of letters written by John McDowell that were among the Goldsborough papers at "Myrtle Grove." (There was no McDowell correspondence in the College archives.) Later, at the time of the constitutional bicentennial in 1976, I was ei1couraged by Rebecca Wilson, then Director of Public Relations at the College, to wiite an article on McDowell; and in the summer of 1977 President Richard Weigle granted me two months' leave from my library duties for research and writing. I found that the project was more extended than I had anticipated. Before I could understand the circumstances leading to the appointment of McDowell I had to know more about the politics of his era. For background I read Douglas Southall Freeman's biography of George Washington. Cumulatively, through day-by-day entries, Washington emerges as a man head and shoulders above his contemporaries. I chose to adopt Freeman's technique of examining day-by-day accounts. I read the Maryland Gazette and the house and senate journals covering the days of the November 1984 session of the Maryland Assembly when St.

IV PREFACE v

John's was chartered. These and the letters of Rev. William Smith were major sources for my first article: "1784; The Year St. John's College was Named." Again I found that I needed to search more deeply in order to answer the questions I had about John McDowell. In particular, I had to know more about King William's School. The results of this research were published in my next three m1icles: "King William's School and the College of William and Mary"; "King William's School Plans to Become a College"; and "King William's School Survives the RevolUtion." By the time I wrote the fifth article, "John McDowell, Federalist: President of St. John's College," I knew that it was the Rev. William Smith who brought to fmition fifty years of attempts to found a Maryland college. He wrote the charters of both Washington College and St. John's College. McDowell had attended the College of Philadelphia when Smith was its provost, and it was the Philadelphia connection that was crucial in bringing McDowell to Maryland.

I am grateful to the helpful staff of the following libraries and archives: the St. John's College Library; the Maryland State Archives; the Historical Society of. Pennsylvania Archives; the Archives of the Histmical Collection of the Episcopal Church; the Maryland State Library; the Archives in the Swemm Library of the College of William and Mary; the Archives of Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy; the Garrett Library of the Milton Eisenhower Library of the Johns Hopkins Univer~ity; and the Archives of the Library of Congress. For their critical comments in the preparation of the essay on the naming of the College I am grateful to Eva Brann, Mmy Fletcher, Phebe Jacobsen, Mildred Trivers, Margaret Ross, Harriet Sheehy, Allison Karslake, and Kathryn Kinzer. For clitical comments while I prepared the other articles I am grateful to Mary Fletcher, James Tolber1, and Phebe Jacobsen.! thank Nancy Jordan for her skill and care in typing four of the manuscripts. I especially thank Elliott Zuckennan, who suggested publishing the five essays together and who carefully edited them into a consistent whole; and Christina Davidson, whose skills in graphic design and word processing helped produce this issue of the St. John's Review.

Charlotte Fletcher Annapalis, May I 991 "• p E

/

I //_ I <)

(Fig. 1) Counties of Maryland and the Pennsylvania Border. The three western­ most counties, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett, were not incorporated until 1776, 1789, and 1872 respectively. One: King William's School and the College of William and Mary

Long after Maryland was chmtered by Lord Baltimore, its English overlords continued to treat Maryland as if it were part of Virginia. For example, in the last decade of the seventeenth century, officers of the Crown and the Church helped found a college in Virginia named William and Mary and a free school in Maryland named King William's School. By charter William and Mary College was given the entire revenue from a one-penny tax on every pound of tobacco exported from both the Maryland and the Virginia plantations to coun­ tries outside England, Wales, and Scotland; no portion of the tax upon what Mmyland's plantations produced was reserved for a free school in Maryland. According to Maryland's Governor Francis Nicholson and Rev. Thomas Bray, the Bishop ofLondon's Conmtissary for Maryland, the college in Virginia should be of great benefit to Maryland youths who wanted a higher education. At the time the two institutions were founded, some members of the General Assembly shared this expectation, an expectation that was never fulfilled. It was many years before a restored proprietary government in Maryland awarded the Atmapolis free school a revenue comparable to what the Crown had given William and Mary College in perpetuity by charter. In 1632 King Charles the First carved two ribs from Virgirtia north of the Potomac and gave them to Cecilius Calve1t, second Lord Baltimore, who called the territory Maryland in honor of Queen Hernietta Maria. It became a home for families of Calvert's own faith, the Roman Catholic, and of many other sects. As early as 1671, Calvert proposed that a college be founded within the province of Maryland, but his proposal foundered in an overwhelmingly Protestant lower house of the Assembly- the upper house, or Council, appointed by the Propri­ etor was wholly Catholic- on the question of whether instruction should be Catholic, Protestant, or both. 1 2 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Twenty years later, when a royal governor, Francis Nicholson, who was a strong Church of England man, urged the Assembly to build a free school and both houses agreed - though they insisted that they wanted not one free school but many free schools - there was no controversy. An Act of Assembly in 1692 had excluded Catholics from both houses and had also imposed a tax on all free holders to support the Church of England throughout the newly drawn parishes of the province. 2 Free school did not mean "free education; it meant a school that made its students free by giving them a liberal education. 3 The Act that founded King William's School (1696) described free schools as places where Latin, Greek, Writing, "and the like" would be studied, for the "Propagation of the Gospel, and the Education of the Youth oftltis Province in good Letters and Manners," with "one Master, one Usher, and one Writing-Master or Scribe." 4 In 1700 Bray reported that the free school already slatted in Annapolis was also teaching "arithmetic, navigation, and all useful learning." 5 It was the intention of at least two officials of the Crown and Church, Nicholson and Bray, that some youths educated in Maryland's free schools be further educated at William and Mary College in studies preparing them for ordination as priests in the Church of England. Indeed, Govemor Nicholson sought moral and financial support for Maryland's first free school by praising the noble example set by the college in Virginia "now vigorously carried on," saying "We ... in assembly attempted to make learning a handmaid to devotion and founded free schools in Maryland to attend their college." 6 On his visit to Maryland in 1700 after the Annapolis school had begun, Bray went even further in confirming this, saying its purpose was chiefly to prepare those youths who wanted to study divinity at William and Ma1y College.7 All early American colleges began as free schools, or with a free school attached, to prepare boys for life and college studies. The grammar school which was the beginning of William and Mary College was also called a free school. Rev. James Blair was founder of William and Mmy College and Commissary for the Bishop of London in Virginia. Blair lived in Virginia from the time of his appointment until his death, whereas Rev. Thomas Bray, Commissary for Mary­ land, spent only one year in his province. But despite his short stay the General Assembly remembered him gratefully for the magnificent library of eleven hundred books which he collected and gave them in 1699, and for the good men he sent to fill the pulpits in Maryland's newly established churches-' As founder of the first missionary societies in the Church ofEngland9 his influence extended far beyond Maryland. The Book of Common Prayer adopted by the American Episcopal Church in 1979 includes his birthday (February 15) with those of saints of the early church for special celebration. Yet Bray was visionary in the extreme in 1700 when he wrote the Bishop of London from Maryland that youths educated in the Annapolis school who later FLETCHER 3

studied diviuity at William and Mary College could then be ordaiued by the Bishop of London's suffragan "residing in the province."10 Americans would have no bishop in the Anglican succession, or any other, until after the Revolu­ tion.11 Moreover, Kiug William's School, chmtered in 1696 in Maryland, and Willimn and Mary College, chartered iu 1693 in Virginia, would not develop hand iu hand as Nicholson and Bray imagiued; each would develop according to the style of its native province. Although there were many differences in both style and substance between Maryland and Virginia, there were many similarities at the time their first educational institutions were founded. Both were founding new capital cities­ Williamsburg in Virginia and Annapolis in Maryland. Both had royal governors -Sir Edmund Andros and Francis Nicholson served in tum as governor of each colony. Both had economies based on the production and sale of tobacco. Both chose to name their infant schools after the Crown, hoping for a royal blessing in return. So similar seemed Maryland and Virginia to the Lords of Trade iu London that they counted them as one plantation growing tobacco to produce taxable wealth for the Crown. Siuce the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Charles the Second (1673), Maryland and Vrrginia had been linked together in a levy of one penny per pound upon tobacco exported to places other then England, Wales, or the town of Berwick on Twede, an exportation very aptly called the "side trade.'"2 If the Lords of Trade linked Maryland and Vrrgiuia together as one plantation, it is not surprising that the Lords of the Church, specifically the Lord Bishop of London, viewed them as one field under his care, and, furthermore, thought one college would do for both. However, demographic and geographic differences did exist. Maryland had the most diverse population of all thecolonies13 while Virginia was settled almost entirely by members of the Church of England. Until Maryland's political revolution of government (1688-92), the colony was open to Catholics, Quakers, Anglicans, and dissenting Protestants, and in 1649 it became a r'efuge for a group of Puritans from Virginia fleeing a wave of persecution which followed the execution of Charles the First and the accession of Cromwell. To accommodate the Puritans Lord Baltimore urged the Mmyland Assembly iu 1649 to adopt the famous Act of Toleration, and the Assembly complied. In that smne year the Puritans left Virgiuia and settled iu Maryland at Severn, in an area that would become Anne Arundel County. In 1650 they were able to elect two members to Maryland's lower house. Even so they turned violently against the proprietary government, hastening its overthrow. It is said that St. Anne's Church iu Annap­ olis grew slowly because of the many dissenting Protestants living in the parish. 14 This meant that St. Anne's for many years had a small congregation and that its Rector had time to serve also as Master of King William's School. In any case, King William's School had a succession of Rectors of St. Anne's as Masters. 4 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

In the extent and configuration of their lands, Virginia and Maryland were conspicuously different. Virginia was not only vastly larger- and therefore wealthier- but her territory except for one small section all lay west of the Chesapeake Bay. Mmyland 's much smaller area straddled the Bay, and her ten counties in 1695 were located five on the Eastern and five on the Western Shore. So whenever legislators voted according to their regional interests, a consensus vote in favor of collective action was hard to achieve. Governor. Nicholson, an able career administrator, comPlained "G-, I know better to Govern Virginia & Maryland than all the Bishops of England, if I had not hampered them in Mmyland & kept them under I should never have been able to have governed them." About this remark Rev. James Blair commented in a letter to the Bishop of London: "I don't pretend to understand Maryland but if I know anything of Virginia they are a good natured tractable people as any is in the world. " 15 Just as these differences were reflected in the character of the two provincial governments, so too they influenced the development of the two educational institutions. They did indeed spring from a common heritage in the same decade; they did indeed enjoy alternately the leadership of governors Nicholson and Andros, and they were promoted by the Church of England at the time of their founding. But from then on they were distant cousins. By charter William and Mary was named for a reigning couple; King William's School for the King only, Queen Mary having died in 1694, a year after the Virginia college was chartered. The sponsors of William and Mary College specified in their charter the revenues they expected the King to give them as endowments. Rev. James Blair traveled to England with charter in hand, where friends persuaded him that in addition to a Master and Usher even the Grammar School would need a President to discipline Masters and Scholars16 Whereupon he added paragraph 3 to the Charter, naming himself President for life. He appealed to a sympathetic and charitable Queen Mary, who got him an audience with the King. He petitioned William on bended knee and received almost all he asked for. Petitioners for King William's School, on the other hand, did not present their charter in person and requested not specific endowments but ones "conformable" to those given by charter to the college in VIrginia. The King lent his name and that was all. Yet even the magnificent royal endowments that William and Mary College was fortunate enough to receive proved inadequate to create a college. In addition to the duty on the side trade, they included accrued money from quit-rents, the "profits" from the surveyor general's office, and twenty thousand acres of land. Forces in the Virginia Assembly thwarted Blair's efforts; his zeal was taken for ambition (they thought he wanted to become a bishop), and as head of a college faction he fought the royal governors as well as the House of Burgesses to gain the support William and Mary needed to become a college. Until the "college" acquired six professors in addition to the President, power of administration and all its property was vested in the nineteen trustees. When its faculty developed FLETCHER 5

to this size, then "according to our Royal Intent ... the said Manors, Lands, Tenements, Rents, Services, Rectories, Annuities, Pensions, and Advowsons of Churches, [etc.]" should be made over to the President and Faculty. After the transfer, the President and Faculty could elect one of themselves to the House of Burgesses,l7 a parliamentary representation like that allowed the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. When the school thus attained college status, Blair's power, as~ consequence, would be further increased, a develop­ ment the Burgesses postPoned as long as they could. In 1727 an Usher was the sole teacher in the Grammar School. Later there was a Master, an Usher, and a Writing-Master. President Blair had special difficulty in collecting the one-penny duty on the side trade. Partly it was the fault of Queen Anne's War- pirates ravaged the sea and trade with England's enemies was viltually impossible. The duty originated in "An Act for the Encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland Trades, and for better securing the Plantation Trade" passed by Parliament in 1673. It was reserved for the use of the Crown. Bray had investigated its availability when looking for funds to support the Church in Maryland, only to find that it had already been given to the college in Virginia. 18 When King William and Queen Mary bestowed the duty upon William and Mary College by charter, it was on condition that the college pay the salary of its collectors out of the revenue collected. 19 On several occasions President Blair solicited the help of the Mmyland Council to further the collection. His first solicitation came in 1695 as a directive from the Commissioners of the London Customs House. It asked Maryland's Governor and Council to reduce by fifty percent the fee given to Maryland Collectors (it had already been reduced in Virginia), and to abolish the Office of Comptroller and Surveyor since the Govemors of William and Mary intended to audit the accounts themselves and thus save all profits for the college20 The Council's response is unknown, but the directive cert

This incident suggests the striking difference in the styles affected by the founders of King William's School and those of William and Mary College. Trustees in Maryland, often falteringly, worked through the ordinary channels of the Assembly, responding to built-in tensions between Council and purse-con­ scious lower house, Govemor and Assembly, Eastern Shore and Western Shore, country patty and Am1apolis party, and the still unresolved conflicts among the various sects in the Province)n contrast, the ever vigilant Rev. James Blair in Virginia initiated all the action. He led a college faction which fought the House of Burgesses, the Governor, and even the trustees and clergy, to make his college a reality; and, when they did not cooperate, he called down the wrath of God upon them. In his often pious but autocratic way, he fulfilled the dream of his life and built a splendid college for Virginia. It can be said of the founders of both institutions that they adhered valiantly to their respective goals of founding free schools in Maryland and a college in Virginia. Fresh from the experience of founding William and Mary College, in October 1694 Governor. Nicholson, when first addressing the Mmyland Assembly then sitting in St. Mary's City, urged them to found an educational institution which he termed a free school and offered a generous gift towards its support. Members of the lower house subscribed generously also, saying "Doubt not that every well minded person within this province will contribute the same. "22 The Council, too, contributed. Nicholson read them the charter of William and Mary College, suggesting that they draw up a supplication "to present tl1eir Sacred Majesties for the Erecting the said free-school confonnable as near as may be to the said Chatter. "23 Both houses insisted, and indeed persuaded Nicholson, that free schools should be established throughout the counties as well as at Arundell­ Town on the Severn where the seat of government would move in the following year. No text has survived of that portion dealing with establishment of free schools in "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning & Advancement of the Natives of the Province" passed in 1694 in response to Governor Nicholson's initiative, but its contents are known. 24 It called for the founding of a free school on the Western Shore at Severn (Annapolis had not yet been founded) and on its successful operation another at Oxford on the Eastern Shore; then, in each of the counties as means permitted. This basic mandate would be repeated in the Act which did survive, that of 1696, and would be adhered to by the legislators until county schools were actually funded in the Act of 1723. But that part called the "Advancement of Natives of this Province," requiring that all provincial jobs not appointed by the Crown be filled by natives of at least three years' residence, was not reenacted until 1704.25 Both Nicholson and the Assembly realized that local schools were needed to fit native-born men for the offices of church and state. FLETCHER 7

The Act of 1694 was weak in that it did not mention trustees to cany out its purpose. Recognizing this weakness the Council asked the Assembly what was to be done with the money already levied for the maintenance of a free school or schools.26 Should it not be used to build a small school and maintain a schoolmaster? Having no trustees it could deploy to engage architects and builders, or to select a schoolmaster, the lower house prudently replied, "Re­ solved that the money thereby raised should be kept in Bancke."27 Eager to help, the Bishop of London had already sent a schoolmaster named Andrew Geddes to the Province. Unprepared to receive him, the Assembly first assigned him as a reader in a vacant church, and then dispatched him to William and Mary College until a schoolhouse could be built in Maryland. No more was heard of him.Z8 Finally the Council and lower house together wrote and enacted an "Act for Establishing Free Schools" of July 1696.29 In its petitionary preamble it thanks the King "for his royal benediction to our neighboring colony [Virginia] ... in your gracious Grant and Charter for the propagation of the College" and asks him to extend "your Royal Grace and Favour to us your Majesty's Subjects of this Province, represented in this your Majesty's General Assembly thereof." It is clearly stated throughout that all the enactments are proposed "with the Advice, Prayer and Consent of this present General Assembly, and the Authority of the Same." It politely informs the King of the Assembly's intent but nowhere pretends, as the charter of William and Mary does, that the enactments originated with the King. The royal "we" appears in every paragraph of the charter for William and Mary College, usually as "we have granted'' or "we grant." It is a fiction which the General Assembly in Mmyland did not employ. Like the charter for William and Mary College, Maryland's "Act for Estab­ lishing Free Schools" required that there be eighteen to twenty trustees who should elect a rector from among themselves each year to serve as chief officer. In the corporate title of both, the trustees were called VisitorS and Governors. Unlike the charter for William and Mary, the Act provided that whenever one or more of the trustees "shall die or remove himself and Family out of this Province into any other country for good and all," he should be replaced by "one or more of the Principal and better Sort of the Inhabitants of the said Province." The charter for William and Mary College, on the other hand, appointed its trustees "for ever" with "perpetual succession," offeling no process for removal if they left the Province. First among the group named as trustee was "our trusty and well-beloved Francis Nicholson, our Lieutenant-Governor in our colonies of Virginia and Maryland," who remained a trustee for many years after Blair had ousted him as governor of Virginia because there was no means of lawfully removing him as trustee of the college. Needless to say, when certain men were named trustees for ever, Blair had not anticipated that Nicholson would become his enemy; and when Blair was tenured as President for life, Nicholson had been 8 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

equally naive. Blair, of course, had thought the "for ever" would last only a few years, believing that the school would quickly develop into a college when the Statutes called for in the charter would be written, vesting power and all property in the President and Faculty. However, that day, when the school was finally awarded college status through the enacting of the Statutes by the Assembly, did not arrive for more than thirty years. In September 1696 the lo,wer house of Mmyland's General Assembly in­ stmcted the Sheliffs throughout the pmvince to collect all subscriptions, and commanded the trustees with all convenient speed to meet together and treat with workmen (a bricklayer had just arrived from Philadelphia) to agree upon a building proportionable to the tobacco and money subscribed.30 Four years later the schoolhouse was built. 31 On 7 May 1700 ten of the original nineteen Visitors and Governors named in the Act of 1696 met with the Bishop of London's Commissmy, Rev. Thomas Bray, during his visitation to Maryland. After filling county vacancies on the board occasioned by death or departure of trustees from the province, ''they proceed to know what money is raised toward building the said Schools [schools in the counties]."32 Represen­ tatives of all eleven counties were present except those from Anne Arundel and St. Mary's. Two Cantabrigians were among the completed board membership of 1700: Robert Smith was a graduate33 and newly appointed Col. Thomas Green­ field had attended Cambridge University.34 Six were members of the Governor's Council, who, acting as Visitors and Governors, agreed upon compensation due the free school because of occupation of a schoolhouse room by the Council (no quarters had been provided them in the new state house). Six years later the Rector and the Visitors and Governors were to demand payment from the Assembly for past rent, claiming that an agreement to that effect had been made on 3 May 1700.35 Undoubtedly in 1700 the Council thought their occupation a temporary anangement but were nonetheless uncertain of its propriety, for on 13 May 1701 they said to the lower house, ·

Whereas the free school wee now sit in hath been built in great measure by the Subscriptions of Severall private psons well affected to that good Designe, who arc desireous to see the good ef:Tect thereof, It is recommended to your house to consider how the best use may De made of the sayd house, it being now finished, And also that you will take care to provide some convenient fitting place for his Majesty's Council to sitt in in Assembly time for the better dispatch of business.36

The lower house made no effort to provide other quarters for the Council. But four years later a majority of the house, like the Council, believed that the "good Designe" for free schools was jeopardized by rental of the schoolhouse for government use. The house felt it necessary to enact a bill on 30 September 1704, reaffirming its support for free schools, which read, "the petitionary Act to FLETCHER 9

establish ... free schools is declared to be in full force to all Intents construccons and purposes."37 Its good intentions, however, were defeated by events. On 17 October 1704 the new state house burned, and hence the occupation of the schoolhouse not only by the Council but also by the Public Library (the Bray Collection) [Fig. 21 and by the public records was prolonged until another state house was built in 1711.

(Fig. 2) Three books from the ''Public Library," housed in the King William's schoolhouse from 1700 until 1786. Many books in the collection are embossed De Biblioteca Annapolitana on the front cover and Sub Auspiciis Wilhelmi Ill on the back. The volume of Chrysostom shown in the center was consulted by Bishop John Carroll and partially translated by John Shaw. Known as both the An­ napolitan Library and the Bray Collection. (Courtesy of St. John's College Library, on deposit at Maryland State Archives.)

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Rev. James Blair was having his own troubles. The side trade was hampered by Queen Anne's war against France. From what little trade there was, President Blair wanted more levy money than he was receiving. He did not hesitate in August 1704 to ask the Governor of Maryland "to quicken 10 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

the Collectors in making up their Accounts of the one Penny ... and to take Bond from the said Collectors to the College for their Answering." The Council replied that "they do think the Collectors have already given Bond Sufficient to Answer the said Duty. "38 It is possible that the Customs Collectors had little incentive to gather the duty after President Blair appropriated the fee they ordinarily received for their trouble; and Maryland had litlle interest in helping collect a levy from which it derived no benefit. It was difficult enough for the Councillor-trustees to rally support in the lower house for the free school in Annapolis, which the counhy party viewed as operating at county expense. In addition to Blair's disappoint­ ment over the small amount of revenue coming from the one-penny duty, disaster struck his college on 29 October 1705. Fire destmyed the college building, which was sheltering both the House of Burgesses and the college grammar school. The college then had no building at all- to occupy itself or to rent out- until it built a new one more than ten years later. King William's School also waited more than ten years to gain full possession of its schoolhouse. A kind of stalemate existed between the trustees and the lower house, which refused to pay fair rent for the schoolhouse. Finally, in 1706, the trustees took a firm stance, saying they would either receive fair rent or sell. This brought the lower house around. The deal struck for rental of the whole building must have been agreeable to both parties,39 trustees and legislators, for they do not discuss it again until 1709, when the Council complained to the lower house that an open chest standing in the free school porch "is exposed to the Weather so that several Certificates of Land ... are damnified and spoiled. "40 Once more the lower house was dilatory; two years later the same complaint was lodged. The completion of the state house in 1711 relieved the situation, for in it a Council office was provided.41 Presumably there were a master and scholars meeting elsewhere in Annapo­ lis, as the lower house mentions them in connection with their use ·of the Public Library.42 The first master whose name we know was Rev. Edward Butler, who began teaching some time before 1710. From that year until his death in 1713 he was both rector of St. Anne's and master of King William's Schoo1. 43 In 1711 the Committee of Aggrievances of the Assembly reiterated the desire of each county for a free school of its own:

It is humbly offered by this Committee as an Aggrievance that the Country receives no Benefit by the Duties paid for the Maintenance of the free School and they pray the House to consider whether the present Governors and Visitors of the free School apply the Money arising by Virtue of such Duties according to the Act for that Purpose made and whether the said Governors and Visitors have any Right thereto.44 FLETCHER II

In answer the House suggested in November 1713

that forasmuch as most of the trustees in the Act named are dead and departed the present Rector, Govemor and Visitors be such with the Addition of one out of those Counties where there are none already. The Money now in the Treasurers' Hands belonging to the ffree Schools be called in and let out on good land security.... That the Accounts of the ffree Schools be yearly laid before the House for their inspection.45

To this Capt. Jones, for the trustees, readily replied that "the Number of Governors and Visitors is already compleat ... but Cecil, Charles and Somer­ set," and as for the money in the hands of Col. Smithson, Treasurer of the Eastern Shore, who by his own admission is "very aged and crazy," they would ask for land security (which they got by way of a farm in Dorchester County named "Surveyor's Choice"), and they would "alwaJ's be glad to shew the Gen. Assembly the Accounts of their Proceedings." 4 When John Hm1 anived from England in 1714 as the first royal governor since 1709-the President of the Council had acted as governor from 1709 to 1714-he circulated a questionnaire prepared by the Bishop of London to the clergy asking among other things about the education of Maryland children. It revealed that "the case of schools is ve1y bad, Good Schoolmasters are very much wanting." 47 This, of course, was what the country party had been saying for years. Governor Hart noted the lack of schools in his first address to the Assembly on 5 October 1714:

Providence in his bounty has blessed the Inhabitants of this Province with a numerous Issue but It is a deplorable Ret1ection that no better Provision is made for the Education of your youth, there being but a slender support for one School on the Western and none on the Eastern Shore of this so wide a bay. I do eamestly recommend this Gentlemen to your Consideration being a Duty incumbent upon you as you will acquit yourselves to God & the Queen like good Fathers & good subjects.48

Queen Anne died within the year. Her successor, George the First, restored full prop1ietary power to Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore, age fifteen, who had Lord Guilford as guardian. Young Charles had been raised in the Church of England, his father having converted, and was acceptable to the Protestant government of Maryland. In a new optimism which followed the restoration of 1715, the rector and the Visitors and Governors of the Free Schools redefined their purpose, "the Ends for which we were incorporated," and stated their claim to certain properties long ago bequeathed them. They also asked to be enabled by law to conduct business 12 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

with a quorum of five trustees present, it being difficult, they said, to assemble a majority of their members at any one time from the distant counties.49 Their well expressed determination was matched by suitable legislation passed in 1715, vesting in them and .. their Successors for ever, a certain lot of Land in the City of Annapolis, and an House thereon erected, commonly called the Kentish House; and impowering the said Rector and Visitors more easily to transact the Business of the said Free-Sch.ools.''50 In addition, at a meeting of the Visitors and Governors in May 1715, Thomas Bordley, "speedily designed on a voyage to England," was commissioned "to use his Endeavors to invite & Procure some Discreet & learned person ... as an Usher at the said schools ... that he may Expect upon Vacancy of Provost Master thereof to be propos' d in his Place, or otherwise to be Master of another Freeschool erected on the Eastem Shore." 51 We know that Bordley did their bidding because Governor Hart wrote Bishop Robinson in 1717 that "Mr. Wamer who behaves himself with Prudence was on the first meeting of the Visitors of the Free Schools, admitted as Usher to the School of Annapolis." 52 All these were forward steps in the development of King William's School, but its means of suppmt were still slim. For twenty-two years the Council had not officially questioned the fairness of the one-penny-per-pound tax from the side trade going in its entirety to the college in Virginia. It was the Crown's to give. But as trade increased after 1714 and Maryland had desperate need for additional funds to develop schools, members of House and Council naturally wondered why all the levy should go to Virginia when it came from tobacco raised partly on Maryland plantations. The question was first raised in the Council, where the most eminent of the provincial attorneys sat, on 24 March 1715. On that day Charles Carroll, who had been appointed by Charles, Lord Baltimore, "our chief Agent, Escheator, Naval Officer, & Receiver General of all our Rents, Fines, Fmfeitures, Tobaccos or Moneys for Lands, etc.," brought instructions from the King to Governor Hart. Members of the Carroll family were held in high esteem by the Calve1ts, who had entrusted their business to them for several generations. The royal instructions began thus:

First. You shall give directions & take especial Care that John Hart, Esq. Deputy Governour of our Province of Maryland do the first place inform himself of the Principal 'Laws relating to the Plantation Trade Viz ...... An Act for the incouragement of the Greene land and Eastland Trades; and for the better secureing the Plantation Trade. 53

At the reading of the instructions Governor Hart was less concerned about the King's communication than he was about the fact that Mr. Carroll, a Catholic, refused to take the oath of abjuration required of all men holding provincial FLETCHER 13

offices. Deeply disturbed that the Lords Baltimore and Guilford would employ someone as Naval Officer in violation of the act that established the Protestant religion in Maryland, he publicly considered resigning as governor. This was the year the King of France recognized James the Pretender as true King of England and some Maryland hotheads shot off a cannon in honor of the Pretender's birthday.54 Fear that there were Jacobites among Maryland's Catholics caused Governor Hart's unease apd distraction. Had he studied the Act made in the twenty-fifth year of the Reign of King Charles the Second as instructed by the King, he might have more quickly become sensitive to the fact that the ancient linkage of the Mmyland and Virginia plantations gave the duty entirely to Virginia. But instead of questioning the levy, Hart quarreled with Charles Carroll and throughout 1717 continued to exhort the Assembly to find means to provide better for the education of Mmyland children. It required an aggravation of another sort to focus his attention on the lack of generosity shown Maryland by the Crown: the erection of a beautiful college building for William and Mary in Williamsburg,55 a visible monument to the extraordinary generosity of the Crown toward that college. Conscious of the splendor of the building, in 1719 Hart admitted to the Assembly "your abilities [your wealth] do not come up to your desire for that laudable end [to build schools]." 56 By this time fully informed about the law of the tobacco trade which had enriched William and Mary College, he was persuaded to ask the Lords Baltimore and Guilford to beg a fair share of the King's bounty for Maryland schools:

The good People of this province [he wrote them] have paid Large Sums of money towards the Encouragement of Learning there [William and Mary College] which the Distance of the Place And the Great Charge of Schooling Children hath made altogether useless to us; For such psons as are of Ability to Defray such Charge choose Rather to Educate their Children in Great Britain .... We are humbly of Opinion ... that we should have Some share in his Royall Bounty Toward the Support of a Free School already Built at Annapolis and that the one Penny p pound to be Collected within this Province ... might be applied to the use and Support thereof. 57

The Proprietors received the royal answer in April 1720. It was negative. Governor Hart was sony to report to the Assembly that they "can have no Expectation of benefit from the Duty ... having Setled the same for ever on the College of Virginia."58 But in the October 1720 session of the Assembly the Lords Baltimore and Guilford suggested that a moiety of the 3" per hogshead of tobacco the Assembly allowed Governor Hart should be applied to the school at Annapolis, a proposal the lower house agreed to. In his speech of 1717 Govemor Hart had said, "The Province is now in the most happy Condition that ever it was since the first Settlement." 59 Such a 14 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

change for the better can be detected in the temper of the Assembly Proceedings. The lower house now acted, whereas it fonnerly had found legalistic reasons for saying no. In 1720 arrangements were made to finish a room for the Public Library,60 and the Committee of Accounts wa<; ordered to pay the Rector and the Visitors and Governors of the Free School the sum of eighty-six pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence cunent money for the rent of the schoolhouse, which they did without demur. Twen,ty-five years after the chartering of King William's School it.;; schoolhouse was tenanted by the school master and its rooms were available for classes. Furthermore, the lower house acted favorably on a petition from Michael Piper,61 Master of the Free School at Annapolis, asking that "vacant ground lying between the School House and the Stadt House be granted him for a small Garden." 62 We know also that an usher was at the school. By 1721 King William's School had attained the desired stability described by its charter- one master, one usher, and an annual income of one hundred and twenty pounds for their support, and one hundred scholars more or less. By charter this was the signal to establish schools in all the counties. Enough had been collected for that purpose from an "Imposition on Sundry Commodities exported out of, and other imported into, this Province, which has succeeded with such desired Effect." "An Act for the Encouragement of Leaming, and erecting Schools in the several Counties within this Province" was passed in October 1723, naming seven Visitors in each county to receive funds and to build and organize a school in each.63 The fund was divided into twelve parts for the twelve existing counties, to build a school near the center of each. King William's School did not share in this distribution. Besides the schoolhouse and the Public Library in its charge, it had enough income to survive from the moiety of the three pence allowed Governor Hart and from vmious taxes, 64 rental properties, gifts, and legacies. Now that the counties had the means to develop free schools of their own, the country party no longer jealously watched how the trustees of King William's School expended public funds, thus allowing them a free hand to develop the Annapolis school. Two: An Endowed King William's School Plans to Become a College

In 1732 King William's School received an adequate, though not princely, endowment. This was fortunate because a few years earlier it had lost all support from provincial taxes. The endowment was a legacy of young Governor Benedict Leonard Calvert, who willed the school one third of Ills estate. At mid-century, legislation to develop the Annapolis school into a college, and to establish another college on the Eastern Shore, was introduced in the General Assembly. King William's School was chartered by an act of 1696.1 It was planned that a school should be founded on the Eastern Shore at Oxford, Talbot County, after King William's School became self-supporting. And after that, one at a time, free schools should be established in the other counties of Maryland. However, no county schools were fmmded under the act of 1696. They were not established until thirty years later by an act of 1723,2 wltich divided into twelve equal parts all the monies collected since 1696 for the benefit of public schools. County school boards were appointed to serve in "perpetual succession" like the Rector and Visitors and Governors of King William's School. They were directed to use their portion of this money to purchase one hu:n,dred acres for a schoolhouse and for support of the masters. King William's School did not share in this distribution, nor did it receive any portion of the annual taxes eatmarked thereafter for public schools. Although sometimes called the Annapolis Free School, it was quite distinct from the county school called Anne Anmdel County Free School established under the act of 1723. A majority in the Assembly wanted local schools inrmediately. But a minority continued to trunk that the one-school-at-a-time procedure outlined in the act of 1696 would build better schools. Those who wanted a college or two for Maryland favored the earlier act. They thought that to distribute limited public funds for education among so many schools would give none of them enough support to develop into the kind of good school the province needed for its youth. Young Benedict Leonard Calvert, governor of Maryland from 1727 to 1732, belonged to this group and on 18 March 1728/29, wrote antiquarian Thomas 16 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Heame at Oxford University that "wee have here settled a fund for a free school in the several12 counties." But he said there would be a better chance for "Real Success in Education" if the limited funds had been spent on "our two older foundations," i.e., the school in Annapolis and the one proposed for Oxford by the Act of 1696, where there were accommodations for "Boarding Scholars." 3 Soon after his arrival in Maryland in 1727, Calvert "in tender Consideration" of an application from the lo)'ler house, gave to the county schools half of the three-pence-per-hogshead t~ reserved for the governor's use. 4 This was the revenue that Governor Hart gave King William's School in 1720. The act renewing the revenue in 1723 provided for its expiration in 1726.5 Loss of the revenue from this tax almost wrecked King William's School.

The funds were sunk, the School had soon decay' d Unless supported by thy [Govemor Calve1t's] Bounteous Aid,6 rhymed poet and schoolmaster Richard Lewis. For what Calvert ahnost de­ stroyed with his left hand, he saved with his right by seeking private benefactors to aid the Annapolis school. Governor Calvert's "Bounteous Aid" came as one third of his worldly goods, which he, mindful of failing health, bequeathed King William's School in a will written just before he sailed for England in April 1732.7 Benedict Leonard Calvert, great-grandson of Charles I and the Duchess of Cleveland, and younger brother of the fifth Proprietor, Charles, Lord Baltimore, was only twenty-seven years old when he became Governor of Mary land. According to two discerning friends, he was scholarly and generous. Thomas Hearne, older than Calvert, had corresponded with him ever since Calvert's student days at Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1717. During his years in Maryland Calvert enjoyed the company of a contemporary, Richard Lewis, a poet and schoolmaster, who had entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1718. Hearne often mentions Calvert in his famous diary, 8 Lewis writes of him in his occasional verse. Both mention the Annapolis School. Hearne confessed that he had tried to persuade Calvert to stay in England rather than go to what Calvert in his previously mentioned letter called an "unpolished part of the Universe." But while saying this, Calvert sent to Hearne, as if to show that conditions were changing in Maryland, a copy of Richard Lewis's translation of Holdsworth's Muscipula: the Mousetrap,9 recently printed on Maryland's new printing press. In the preface, Lewis called himself"one who is engaged in teaching Language"; Calvert described him as "a man realy of Ingenuity, and to my judgment well versed in Poetry." Though he was best known as a nature poet, 10 his occasional verses are of interest because they tell of Calvert's intention to build a college in Maryland. Of the bequest to King William's School, Lewis writes, FLETCHER 17

The Gift he gave was small to what his :Mind Had to advance good Literature design' d, His pow'rful Entreaties would have mov'd His Noble Friends who useful Learning Lov'd, To build a College, where our Youths might find Instruction to Adorn each studious Mind; And for their Use his B~lOks were all Design'd. 11

"His Books" refers to Calvert's well-stocked library, which it is believed Lewis consulted while preparing annotations to Muscz]JUla. Evidently Calvert had intended to give his library to the college. Lewis is commonly thought to have written Proposals for Founding an Academy at Annapolis. 12 Its author sounds like an experienced language teacher when he says Greek and Latin are often taught in a way "too dry, laborious & discouraging to the Capacities of Boys" and proposes that a better method be adopted for the Academy. Lewis, if he is the author, proposes a faculty composed of a senior Lecturer, or Regent, "who shall be Professor of Divinity, Moral Philosophy & the Classics: a Master and sub-master or Usher who could teach the Classics, a Writing Master competent in Mathematicks, and an English Master who would also teach reading and Accounts." The author suggests that the Regent and the Greek master in the Academy be "clergymen as best qualified for Instructing the Young Gentlemen designed for Holy Orders," and he clearly means clergymen of the Church of England. Yet he recommends that "none of the Youth of this or the neighboring Provinces, of what Opinion soever they may be in Religion, shall be excluded from the Benefit of receiving their Education here, on Account of their Dissenting from the Establish'd Church." This liberality toward non­ Church of England youth was later stated in much stronger language in the non-sectarian charters of Washington College and St. John's College of 1782 and 1784. In conclusion the author writes,

the Proposer . ... is ready to attend Either of the Honourable Houses when Call'd upon, with all Integrity and Submission, being Prepar'd, as they shall Judge proper, to Enlarge or Contract the Design, and Accomodate the Whole to the Circumstance of the Province; The Genius of Whose Youths He has Remarked to be nahirally Very Good, and Capable of great Proficiency by a Suitable Cultivation.

This last remark suggests again that Lewis, a teacher in the Annapolis school and therefore familiar with the abilities of Maryland youths, was the author of the Proposals. 18 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Unfortunately, the Proposals to Found an Academy at Annapolis, was never introduced in the Assembly. The untimely deaths ofthe two men who would have been its most likely proponents may explain the failure: Calvert died at sea on I June 1732 and Lewis died two years later in 1734. Without the income produced by Calvert's bequest, King William's School, as Lewis wrote, might indeed have "sunk." Until the Revolution it comprised seven-eighths of the school's ,entire income, 13 not counting fees received from students. In his will, Calvert. required that sound investment be made of the inheritance, that it

be put out at Interest upon good Security ... towards the payment of the Salary or Support of the Master or Masters Usher or Ushers of the said School. And to no other purpose whatsoever . ... If it should ever happen a Master of the said School should be wanting during the space of one whole year, so that children cannot be taught instructed educated at least as well as usual ... it be paid to the church wardens & vestry of St. Anne's Parish . .. to apply in the purchase of a Tract of Land ... for the use and benefit of the Minister of the time being and his Successors of St. Anne's Parish. 14

The poverty of St. Anne's Parish helped make it possible for King William's School to operate continuously. St. Anne's Parish had no rectory for its clergy to occupy. The parish, being small, offered a meager living to its rector from the tobacco tax of "40 per poll." 15 This was recognized as early as 12 July 1709, when "the Governor and Council recorded that the Annapolis palish was delib­ erately made small so as to entail a minimum of parochial work for Commissary Bray [who had an additional salary], but that this arrangement provided such a small income that the governor had difficulty in keeping it supplied." 16 Years later, in 1754, Governor Sharpe described the living as scarcely a decent subsistence because of the "Dearth of provision, Fireing & Family necessaries, which the lack of glebe land and a rectory provide." 17 For these reasons, it is likely that between 1732 and 1759, some, if not all, of the rectors of St. Anne's also served as masters of King William's School, living in the schoolhouse quarters and, as masters, receiving some additional income from Calvert's bequest. If this was the case, it was fortunate for the school, because the clergy were well-educated and the school therefore never wanted for masters. 18 In 1754 Governor Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore suggesting that money be raised to build a rectory for St. Anne's Palish according to a plan like that proposed in 1724 by Rev. James Henderson, acting commissary: money should be accumulated by not appointing a rector for St. Anne's for a number of years. 19 And indeed, between 1754 and 1759, St. Anne's had no rector, but was served by a vicar only, Rev. John McPherson. The money saved was used in 1759 to build a rectory at 217 Hanover Street, which was the home of St. Anne's rectors untill885.20 FLETCHER 19

After receiving Calvert's legacy in 1732, King William's School was inde­ pendent of provincial funds. But the county schools, supported by the tax dollar, were at the mercy of the Assembly. In 1740 they lost the revenue from half of the three-pence-per-hogshead tax, 21 and it was never replaced. A bill of 1742 to restore the revenue failed by a vote in the lower house of twenty-seven to eight.22 Throughout the 1740s Assembly sessions were bitter confrontations between the lower house, which claimed an exclusive right to initiate money bills, and the governor, who demanded money for defense. Finally in 1746 Governor Bladen pressed too hard for funds to support His Majesty's troops in King George's war against the French and their Indian allies. In retaliation, the lower house withdrew all funds for the completion of the governor's house begun in 1733. As a result, it stood half-finished without a roof, slowly decaying, until renovated and completed as an academic hall for St. John's College in 1789. 23 A frequent turnover of masters during the 1740s shows that the county schools suffered from loss of revenue. In 1745, 1746, and 1747, tmstees from Anne A1undel, Calvert, Prince George's, Queen Anne's, and St. Mary's counties advettised for many months for qualified candidates.24 Elsewhere in the colonies during the decades of the thirties and forties, people were expetiencing a moral and spiritual uplift known as the Great Awakening. Three colleges claim that they were established as a result of the moral enthusi­ asm of the period: The College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1746; the Academy, College and Charitable School of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) in 1750; and King's College (Columbia) in 1754. Maryland was stirred in its own way by what Samuel Mmison describes as "aggressive missionary work by the Church of England, and a quiet but pervasive growth of liberal Christianity." 25 Social clubs like the famed Tuesday Club and a newly founded Masonic lodge flourished in Annapolis and were part of the liberal movement. Members of the Tuesday Club contributed toward the Talbot County Charity and Work School, founded to educate poor black and white children in useful trades by a fellow member, Rev. Thomas Bacon.26 Both he and Rev. John Gordon?' who left St. Anne's Parish in 1749 for St. Michael's Parish, Talbot County, belonged to the Tuesday Club. They and Rev. William Brogden, rector of All Hallow's Parish, Anne Arundel County, preached sermons in St. Anne's Church before the Society of Free and Accepted Masons of Annapolis at celebrations of the two St. John's days: Gordon on 25 June 1749 and Bacon on 25 June 1753, the feast day of St. John the Baptist. Rev. William Brogden preached before them on the feast day of St. John the Evangelist on 28 December 1749. But Annapolis's social clubs are more famous for their fun and ftivolity than for their moral uplift and good works. Thanks to the historian of the Tuesday Club, Dr. Alexander Hamilton, we have a picture of the King William's school­ room where the predecessor of the Tuesday Club met weekly. 28 It was called the Ugly Club. 20 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

According to Hamilton's history

what chiefly gave this Society the name of the Ugly Club was the squalidness of the Room, where they sat, and held their meetings, it being a large ghastly apartment, of an old Building made use of for a School Room. The plaister of the walls and Ceiling was much decayed and cracked, moldy, dirty, and several places fallen off. Around the walls were many names engraved and done with Ink, Chalk, and marking Stolle, and some human faces and figures of a strange wild fancy with monstrous noses, unconscionable mouths, and horrid staring eyes. The Ceiling was smoked in several places with a candle, and very much gamished with cobwebs, and the Clay nests of worms and wasps. Many panes of Glass in the windows were broke and cracked, the window sills and shelves covered with dust, which had been collecting there for half a century. The floor was squalid, full of spots and plaistered in many places with daubs of dirt, collected from chaws of tobacco, and such like plastic substances, which having been stood upon, adhered, and in a manner grew to the planks. The furniture of the Room consisted of a parcell of old forms and desks, which Served the members of the Club to sit and loll upon. There was only one antiquated elbow chair, which was Set apart for the president of the Club. Thus was it Solely upon account of the Slovenliness of the members (who looked when met like a parcel of ragged philosophers), their affectation of odd gestures, and dirtiness and unseemliness of the Club room that this Society had tbe name of the Ugly Club, not from any bodily deformity in tbe members themselves, for, in that respect, some of them were proper enough men, and tollerably well made.

Among the members was Mr. Pedanticus,

a man of letters, having for some time exercised the office of Schoolmaster for the City of Annapolis, and exerted himself to admiration, in that conspic­ uous station. He was remarkable for wearing dirty linnen nightcaps in summer, and greasy worsted Ditto in winter.... He was an Hybemicum by birth, and was pretty well stocked in the sort of modest assurance which is reckoned peculiar to that nation. He had a particular tum to mechanics, and made such great strides toward the discovery of the perpetuam mobile and the longitude, that it is thought by many competent Ju~ges, had his means or purse been sufficient, he would have effected them both. Like others of his profession he was positive, dogmatic and Imperious, treating all persons, as if they were his pupils or Schoolboys, much given to dispute, and always sure he was in the right, and Commonly needed to get the better of the argument, by ~uoting Greek and Latin authors, which few or none of the Club understood.2

But contrary to Hamilton's comical descriptions and lampoons, many of tbe discourses at the weekly meetings of the Tuesday Club were far from nonsense. Smoothum Sly, Esq., was Rev. John Gordon, whose discourse on 5 April l746 FLETCHER 21

(Fig. 3) The Ugly Club, predecessor of the Tuesday Club, meeting in the King William's schoolroom in the early 1740s. Garrett Manuscript no. 1. (Courtesy of John Work Garrett Library, the Johns Hopkins University Library.)

"was upon Civil Government, and had the approbation of the Club in general, excepting his honor the president, who alledged he spoke too much in favor of popular liberty."30 On 16 August 1748 Gordon was high steward and therefore entertained the Club in his home, which was the schoolhouse.31 By 1747 the Assembly had mended its ways somewhat. After two decades of debate it passed an act for "amending the Staple Tobacco for preventing frauds in his Majesty's Customs and for limitation of Officers' Fees," 32 imposing regulations and inspection on the tobacco trade. These were necessary to raise the quality of Maryland tobacco, to make it competitive with the Virginia leaf, 22 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

which was already under stlict regulation. Hoping to prevent the exportation of "bad and trash tobacco," the act set up numerous inspection stations at ports on the Chesapeake and its tributaries. In that same year the Treaty of Aix-la-Chap­ elle temporarily ended the conflict between England and France in Europe and concluded King George's War in America. With the coming of peace, trade was resumed with the continent, where Maryland's famous Orinoco tobacco was always in demand. The Tobacco Law and peace raised hopes such as those expressed in an essay written in 1747 entitled "On the Means of Improving the Trade." 33 The author recommended that two ports be established, one on each shore of the Bay, to draw the grain ttade. He predicted that these two potts would soon become "Seats of Learning as well as of Commerce." For, he continued, "Athens was the Center of the Commerce as well as of the Literature of ancient Greece." Seemingly the author's dream was shared by the trustees of King William's School, who readied themselves to play a leading role in making Annapolis a center of colonial learning. They gained permission from the Assembly to sell "ce1tain lands and houses belonging to the free-school in the city of Annapolis called King Williana's School," which brought in little rent, and 650 acres in Dorchester County, which brought in no annual profit and on which they had to pay quit rent. The Assembly required that any money realized from the sales must be invested "on good security" and bring in annual interest for suppmt of the masters.34 But having gained the necessary permission, the trustees were in no hurry to sell. Evidently, they were awaiting the outcome of an action just begun in the May 1750 Assembly, whose purpose was to found two colleges with funds acquired through confiscating the property of the county schools. It was necessmy first for the lower house to be polled on the question "Whether the County Schools will be suppressed, in order that a sufficient Fund may be raised for establishing a School, or College, on each Shore of this Province." Thirty-five rriembers voted in the affirmative, seventeen in the negative.35 Just before adjournment the lower house appointed a Committee on Ways and Means and ordered that the proposed bill, when ready, should be published in the Maryland Gazette during the summer recess. The bill as published abrogated the Act of 1723 and proposed to replace county schools with "One good ... school for the Western Shore which should be King William's School with such succession of Rector, Governors and Visitors as directed by the Act of 1696," and one "good ... school at ... on the Eastern Shore." The firstmasterofKing William's School should have a master's degree from Oxford University, and the first master of the Eastem Shore school should have his from Canabridge University, each to be appointed by the vice chancellor of his university, and the vice chancellors would, for the "Time Being" serve as FLETCHER 23

chancellors of the two Maryland colleges. Two Maryland boys, designated Calvert's Scholars, should be educated gratis and be recommended for holy orders in England. "Money arising by ... the Sales of the Land and Chattels belonging to the County Schools shall be ... applied by the said Rector, Gover- nors and Visitors of either School respectively to build suitable and proper Houses ... all such Buildings shall be of Brick or Stone, with shingled Hip Roofs, and but one Story High ... Three Rooms to each School ... to be denominated First, Second and Third Schools." Standards were set for promotion within the vmious schools. For example, no boy should be admitted into the First School until he had read Tully and Horace in Latin and gone through the Greek Grammar, Homer, Theocritus in the Greek likewise.36 According to this bill, King William's School was to develop into a "good school" or college, under the same board that had continued in perpetual succession since appointed by the Act of 1696; and another "good school" or college was to be established on the Eastern Shore, whose location and gover­ nance were not stated in the proposal. This bill, however, was never introduced in the Assembly. By 1750 wheat was becoming an important Maryland export. Many Mm·y­ land planters followed their grain northward to Philadelphia, causing Chester­ town, on the way to Philadelphia, to enjoy a prosperity beyond that of Oxford to the south. One of the attractions of Pennsylvania's capital city was the Academy of Philadelphia, which opened January 1751 to teach

Latin, Greek, English, French, and GennanLanguage; together with History, Geography, Chronology, Logic, and Rhetoric; also Writing, Arithmetic, Mer­ chants Accounts, Geometry, Algebra, Surveying, Gauging, Navigation, As­ tronomy, Drawing in Perspective, and other mathematical sciences; with natural and mechanic Philosophy, etc., agreeable to the Constitutions hereto­ fore published, at the Rate of Four Pounds per Annum and twenty Shillings, Entrance. 37

The exodus of Maryland youths to the Academy, and later to the Academy and College of Philadelphia, became so great between 1751 and 1754 that it occmred to one "Philo Marilandicus" that the money Maryland youths spent in Pennsylvania for their education could build colleges on both the Eastern and Western Shores of Maryland, or at least one in Annapolis. He wrote:

On Enquiiy, it has been found that there are (at least) 100 Mmylanders in the Academy of Philadelphia, and it is experimentally known, that the annual Charges, for Cloaths, Schooling, Board, etc. etc. etc. amount (at least) to 75£ Maryland Currency, 50£ Sterling, for each Youth educated. Hence it is evident, that if this Practice continues but 20 years (at the moderate Computation of 24 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

5000£ Sterling per Annum), there must be remitted from Maryland for the Benefit of the Pennsylvanians, the round Plumb, or Sum of One Hundred Pounds Sterling. Besides this 'tis well known, that vast Sums are every Year transmitted to France, etc. for the Education of our young Gentlemen of the Popish Persuasion, etc. Tho perhaps superior Politics, Interest and Influence may render the saving the Money in the latter Case (entirely lost to the Province), impracticable, yet cettainly our Protestant Patriots might contrive Ways and Means for keeping within Maryland, Cash advanced (as aforesaid), for the Use of Pennsylvania, by establishing a College on each Shore, or one at Annapolis, at which (if duly cheaper, and more conveniently accomodated, and at the same Time) the Cash expended, would still circulate within the Province. If you think these Hints deserve public Consideration, by inserting them in your next, you will oblige, Yours etc Philo Marilandicus 38

Philo Marilandicus did not go unanswered. On reading this letter in the Maryland Gazette, Richard Brooke responded with an argument in favor of one college only. If youths of both shores were educated under one roof, he wrote, they would contract friendships which would wipe out some of the ancient jealousies between the inhabitants of the two shores; if one college only, it would certainly be at Annapolis, where Gentlemen have frequent opportunities to see their children while attending the Assembly and Court. To satisfy those who objected to Annapolis for moral reasons, sirice towns have disorderly elements, good regulations should be enforced. But if a town was considered too objec­ tionable a situation for a college, it could be placed on the opposite shore of the Severn. Brooke, a Protestant heir to "certain lands, which are detained from him by the Jesuits," suggested that the Jesuits be divested of their land, which could be sold to produce revenue for a college. "Here then," he wrote, "we· have found a Fund equal perhaps or very near equal to a genteel Endowment for one College, but by no Means of two." In making this suggestion, to avoid any insinuating aspersions on his character, he made "a public Renunciation of any Right to those Lands." 39 The lower house did indeed write a bill to divest the Jesuits of their lands40 - not to build a college, but to pay Maryland's contribution to frontier defense in the French and Indian War. Since the foe was Catholic, some men feared that Maryland's Catholics might aid the enemy. The upper house, however, rejected the bill. But in answer to Philo Marilandicus and others who wanted a Maryland college, and who expressed their desire in terms advantageous to Maryland's wealth, Governor Sharpe replied in May 1754. He was aroused to action by the sight not only of the thriving college in Virginia, but also of the flourishing FLETCHER 25

Academy and College of Philadelphia where many Maryland youths were spending Maryland cash. Speaking before the Maryland General Assembly in 1754 he said,

Shall I also take the Liberty of intimating what a considerable Benefit must accrue to the Inhabitants, and what Honour must redound to yourselves, from the Foundation of a more perfect and more public Seminary of Leaming in this province; a Scheme this long since put in Execution among our Neighbors, to whom our Youth are still obliged, much to the disadvantage and Discredit of this Province, to recur for Liberal education.

If the Assembly could not be shamed into founding a college, Governor Sharpe held out a carrot: "From my knowledge of what vast Pleasure and Satisfaction his Lordship receives from being able to contribute, and promote, the Reputation Honour and Prosperity of his Province, I will presume to encourage you to expect something more than his bare approbation of such a Proposal." 41 In spite of placing little trust in "more than bare approbation" from the Proprietor, the Assembly responded to the governor's plea by again introducing a college bill, this time an .act to establish one college, not two. Just as in 1750, proponents called for a vote on the question "Whether the Fund now appropriated for the several County Schools, and the money which may arise in the Sale of the Land and Houses, which appertains to the several County Schools, be applied toward the Erection of One public Seminary for Learning within this Province, or Not?" Again, it was resolved in the affirmative, with thirty-eight ayes and thirteen nays. It was then ordered "That the Committee of Laws do make an Enquiry into Ways and Means to raise a Fund, for the Establislunent of One Public Seminary for Learning in this Province and repmt the same to the House." 42 Taxes already levied for the benefit of the county schools were the following: "twenty shillings per Poll on Irish servants being Papists, and on Negroes; the Duty of six pence per barrel on tar and twelve pence on pitch; and twelve pence on Port." The Committee recommended two more- one on feny licenses and another one penny per gall

it sounds more like a redundancy than an innuendo. The schoolhouse, from its completion in 1701, had known public use- by the Council, the Records Office, the Provincial Library, the church, the clubs. In a final vote on 28 May 1754 a majority of one in the lower house voted not to refer the bill "For the Erection of One Public Seminary for Learning within this Province" for consideration in the next Assembly. Eighteen members from the Eastern Shore counties voted for consideration; eighteen men from the Western Shore counties voted against consideration in the next session. The deciding vote was cast against by the Speaker, Philip Hammond, from Anne Arundel County. The two Annapolis delegates present, Walter Dulany and Alexander Hamilton, voted against, as did three delegates from Anne Arundel County. Four delegates from Kent County voted for; the Talbot delegation split.45 All this suggests that the bill of 1754 favored an Eastern Shore location -in all probability Chestertown, not Oxford- rather than Annapolis, where King William's School would have been developed into the Seminary. 1f this was the case, the innuendo may have been a recommendation that the King William's schoolhouse, like the county schools, should be sacrificed for the development of one seminary. The trustees of the county schools, like those of King William's School, had been appointed in perpetual succession46 Undoubtedly, they wanted equable representation on the governing board of the new seminary, along with the trustees of King William's School. An acceptable governance of the one seminary obviously had not been worked out. Furthermore, the bill proposed in 1754 did not carry out the intention of the two earlier acts for the encouragement of learning, both of which were committed to the establishment of county schools. In May 1754 Governor Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore that the session just concluded had not been a propitious time to introduce "the scheme your Lordship was pleased to intimate for compleating the Governour's House." It had indeed been another unproductive session, producing no constructive legislation for defense or education. The lower house had again proposed the unthinkable, that the tax on ordinaries be diverted from the proprietor's income to the support of troops.47 Yet, when sympathetic to a cause, the Assembly could find solutions. News came in July 1754 that young Lt. Col. George Washington (age 22) and his Virginia militia had surrendered to the French and their Indian allies. Governor Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore, "Govemour Dinwiddie renewed his solicitation for our assistance .... By this I was induced to meet our Assembly on the 16th Instant & prevailed them so far as to send up a bill for supporting the Virginians with 6000 pounds." 48 The lower house raised a significant portion of this amount by placing a surtax on ordinaries. Their attempts to attach the base tax on ordinaries, which the proprietor claimed as his own, had failed in the past. Thus they considered the FLETCHER 27

passage of the surtax a signal success, for they had been led to believe that the proprietor considered not only the base tax on ordinaries, but any tax on ordinaries as a source of revenue, his peculiar preserve. Their success proved to be a step in the right direction toward financing a college. During the visit of a victorious Washington to Annapolis thirty years later, the lower house chartered St. John's College, having chartered Washington College in Chestertown two years before. Included in the St. John's charter was a tax on Western Shore ordinaries to provide revenue for its support.

Three: King William's School Survives the Revolution

King William's School in Annapolis, where many generations of boys quietly received an education in the eighteenth century, labored under inescapable administrative, financial, and political problems. It was govemed by trustees appointed in unbroken succession from its founding in 1696 until 1786, when they legally changed its name to Annapolis SchooL They appointed masters and "ushers" (assistants), and directed disciplinmy action until 1789, when Annap­ olis School became St. John's College. Unfortunately the school's journal of proceedings and book of accounts have not been found. 1 However, the Proceed~ ings of the General Assembly record what legislative action was taken in behalf of the school, and the published letters of Governor Horatio Sharpe and a few Gazette notices add commentary. Together, these records document the contin­ uous operation of the school until St. John's College opened. Nineteenth-century histories of King William's School are not continuous nmTatives 2 Yet they satisfied those who held the popular view that St. John's was founded as King William's School in 1696 until several mid-twentieth-cen­ tury historians,3 troubled by gaps in these early histories, doubted its continuity and overlooked the role its trustees played in establishing St. John's. This, the last of three articles on King William's School, covers the years between 1755 and 1786, when five college bills were introduced in the Assembly during the brief peaceful interludes between French and Indian frontier wars, and following the repeal of the Stamp arid Townshend Acts before the American Revolution. This article relates a history of continuous operation during years when King William's trustees dreamed of developing their school into a college. Seven bills to found a college in Maryland were written before the Revolu­ tion. The first of these, ordered by the Assembly in 1750, was never introduced in that body, perhaps because it was grandiose in some of its recommendations. The next college bill (1754), like that of 1750, proposed that county schools be confiscated, an unpopular notion. Also it was unclear about whether the one college (the bill of 1750 had proposed two colleges) was to be located on the 30 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Eastern or Western Shore, thus pleasing neither shore. It did not pass the lower house. A third bill (5 May 1761) failed in the lower house; a fourth (6 May 1761) and a fifth (1763) were killed in the upper house. The sixth and seventh (1771, 1773) were riders on money bills. The upper house killed the sixth but approved the seventh, which" Govemor Eden sighed into law on 21 December 1773, affixing the "Great Seal with wax appendant." 4 All bills written to estaplish a Maryland college before the Revolution provided for the incorporation of King William's School into a new college entity, a fact lending credence to the sign on the St. John's Annapolis campus today, "St. John's College, Founded as King William's School in 1696." Each time a college bill was introduced in the Assembly, King William's board would strengthen its financial situation in order to employ another usher or hire a more able master, thereby making the school a firmer foundation for the college. For example, in 1750, when the first college bill was being discussed, the board gained permission to sell its unproductive real estate and to reinvest on good security to bring in annual interest. When the first college bill was proposed, Rev. Alexander Malcolm,5 a gifted mathematician and musician, was Rector of St. Anne's (1749-1755). He was a teacher before he carne to Annapolis and after he left. In all probability he taught at King William's School and lived in the schoolhouse quarters where some of the other rectors had lived after 1732 (between 1755 and 1759, while saving money to build a rectory, St. Anne's had no rector, employing a vicar who was Jess expensive). If Malcolm was indeed master of King William's School, he was the last master before the Revolution who was also Rector of St. Anne's. The college bill of 1750 in fact had intimated that one man should not be both rector of a parish and a schoolmaster, stating that the head of neither of the proposed colleges shall "officiate in any church living in the province." After 1755 King William's had a succession oflayteachers. No longer sharing a teacher-priest with St. Anne's after Malcolm left, King William's for a few years may have pooled resources with Anne Arundel County School to support a master and an usher in the King William's schoolhouse.6 In 1755 John Wilmot, former master of Anne Arundel School but now master at King William's, advettised for students, calling.the school by the long-accepted name "Free School," and by a name not formerly used, "Public School." 7 Wilmot taught arithmetic, geometry, gravity, surveying, navigation, and Italian (or double-entry) bookkeeping.' His assistant, William Clajon, taught the Latin, Greek, and French languages.9 In 1757 Ciajon advertised that he was offering to teach a new subject, English grammar, saying, 10

The Subscriber having by a great Application acquired a reasonable Knowl­ edge of the ENGLISH GRAMMAR, he proposes to Teach the same at the FLETCHER 31

FREE SCHOOL of Annapolis. Those Parents who cannot afford their Chil­ dren spending several years in the learning of Greek and Latin, may by this Proposal procure to them the only Benefit commonly expected from these Languages, THE LEARNING OF THEIR OWN. Besides, their Daughters can as easily enjoy the same Advantage. As he does not take upon himself to teach English Pronunciation (which will be taught as usual by Mr. Wilmot) he hopes no judicious Person will make any Objection to his being a Foreigner; and that, as his Proposal i.s of a self-evident Advantage to Youth, he will meet with good Encouragement. His terms are very moderate, being only Thirty Shillings, additional to what is allowed to Mr. Wilmot. William Clajon

N.B. This will make no Alteration to the Price given me for Teaching French, Latin and Greek. 11

Even more interesting than that a foreigner would teach English grammar was his invitation to daughters to study at King William's School. Clajon enjoyed some success: his role at the Free School expanded while that of Wilmot became the "subject offalse mmors." 12 By 1759 Wilmot had opened a school at the head of South River, the same year Isaac Dakein began his nine years ( 1759-1768) as King William's schoolmaster. The decade of the sixties in the eighteenth-centmy colonies was turbulent, like the sixties of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and like them changed America. Taxes were the issues in the 1760s- independence became the issue later. Matyland's proprietor refused to allow the large revenue from ordinary licenses to be appropriated by the lower house to finance the French and Indian wars or to go toward the establishment of a college. He claimed it as personal income. Proprietor and king alike exacted taxes on trade, and Marylanders increasingly realized that such levies prevented the growth of h·ade. Until the Stamp and Townshend Acts, these taxes exceeded those paid by two neighboring colonies, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Matyland 's sluggish economy gave the majority country party in the lower house reason to challenge the prerogatives claimed by the proprietary. Governor Sharpe's inability to force the lower house to appropriate revenue for defense prompted the proprietary to write Sharpe that "Scarce any one End of Government is answered." 13 Sharpe found some solace in the bond of freemasonry, which he, the proprietor, and his "enemies" in the lower house respected. 14 A third college bill, introduced on 5 May 1761, unfortunately affronted both the proprietary and country parties. It offended the proprietary by recommending that the unfinished governor's mansion be renovated as the college building, and by appropriating the fees from ordinary licenses to support the college. On the other hand, it offended the country pmty by again proposing that county school property be confiscated to pay for the renovation of the mansion as a college 32 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

building. Many parents in the counties wanted to retain their local schools. In 1763 two new county schools were established in Frederick and Worcester counties. The counties were also offended by the proposal that the present trustees of King William's School be the total governing body, thus abolishing their county school boards. On a final vote the entire bill lost, seventeen votes to fifteen. 15 True friends of a college, ,however, did not accept defeat. The following day (6 May 1761), Charles CaiTo II the Banister, a trustee of King William's School, introduced a fourth college bill. Unlike its predecessor, it did not threaten county schools. Instead, it recommended a lottery to raise money to renovate the governor's mansion as a college building; and it further provided that "one representative of each county ... be named a Visitor with those at present of King William's School," thus giving the country party a share in the governance of the college while preserving the board of King William's. Like the preceding bill, Canoll's recommended that revenue from ordinary licenses support the college. It received a resounding affirmative vote, twenty to twelve, in the lower house. 16 Even George Steuart, a pror)rietary man representing Annapolis, voted for it though it proposed appropriating the revenue from ordinary licenses. Sharpe defended Steuart's defection, saying that had Steumt not voted as he did "his Constituents ... should have rejected him at the next election." 17 Although some members of the upper house also wanted a Maryland college, they knew that Lord Baltimore would not allow such "a strip of his right" and therefore killed the fourth bill.'" Clearly Sharpe was impressed by the size of the vote for founding a college. Believing that an excellent school was needed in Annapolis, he sought support from private benefactors. He wrote the executor of Benedict Calvert's estate in August 1763 that a Mr. Hunt had power of attorney from Visitors of the Free School in Annapolis "to receive what money you shall be pleased to pay him for the use of the said School":

Nothing remains for me but in the name of the Visitors to retum you thanks for what you have done and intend to do for the Advancement of the School, to which I have for my part engaged to contribute Ten pounds a year during my Residence here as Governor.... it is i·eally to be lamented that while such great things are done for the Support of Colleges and Academies in the neighbouring Colonies there is not in this [province] even one good Grammar School. I should be glad if either by Donations or some other method the Fund or annual Income of our School in this City could be augmented so as to enable us to give such a salary to a Master & Usher as would encourage good and able men to acl in those capacities. 19

At the same time these efforts were being made to develop King William's, efforts continued to establish a Maryland college. In 1763 the fifth college bill FLETCHER 33

was introduced by a lower house committee headed by James Tilghman and composed of members of both parties. Despite the bipartisanship, it proved another unacceptable bill. It, too, recommended that license revenue from ordinaries be appropriated to college use. Worse, it proposed the use of an even more contested revenue- three thousand pounds from the balance in the Loan Office- to renovate the govemor's mansion. The upper house said the balance should be used to discharge the debt owed to veterans of the French and Indian wars. Therefore, although it wanted to establish a college, it referred the bill "to a distant day for mature consideration." 20 Alarmed by the growing sentiment in the Council for a college, Sharpe warned the proprietary "that there is a majority even in the upper house that think the Ordynary Lycence Fines could not be applied to a better purpose [than to build a college]," and urged, "if you see it in a light at all different from what it has hitherto appeared to you ... send further instructions." 21 Unfortunately the proprietor had not changed his mind. As late as February 1765 Frederick, Lord Baltimore, adamantly refused to give up the "privilege of Granting and Regulating Ordinaries," which he called the "very essence of my Prerogative." 22 And Sha1pe himself expressed reserva­ tions about giving away the unfinished governor's mansion for a college. He wrote, "it would really be a pity to give it entirely up, especially as I think it very probable that the Assembly will some time or other refuse to pay a Governor's Rent for him & alledge that it was for many years the Custom here & is still in Pennsylvania for the Proprietary to accomodate his Lieutenant-Governor with a Mansi on." 23 In 1764 an epidemic of smallpox gave Sharpe an excuse for not calling the unco-operative Assembly to its regular session. But in his wisdom, at its request, he called a special session to elect delegates to a congress in Boston to protest the Stamp Act Eight other colonies sent delegates, But the governor of Virginia refused even to call a meeting of the burgesses to elect delegates, On 30 May 1765 Annapolis was "thunder struck" by the arrival of Captain Joseph Richard­ son on the ship Pitt bearing news that the king had signed the Stamp Act on the twenty-second of March.24 A new generation of leaders emerged in the sixties composed of men who had enjoyed a liberal education, By far the largest number had either graduated from, or studied at, the College of Philadelphia- at least thirteen from the college and many more from its academy. 25 In 1761 St. Anne's inducted its first native-born priest, Rev. Samuel Keene, a 1759 graduate of the College of Philadelphia, who served as rector until 1767, A year later Rev, William Edmiston, another 1759 graduate of the College of Philadelphia, replaced the scandalous Bennet Allen, a favorite of Lord Baltimore, as St. Anne's rector. Edmiston stayed until 1770, Vestries in Virginia often called College of Phila­ delphia graduates before Maryland vestries could persuade Lord Baltimore to 34 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

appoint them.26 Three of this new generation were elected to the lower house, where they relentlessly challenged prerogatives claimed by the proprietor: Thomas Johnson, who studied law in Annapolis with Stephen Bordley, was elected in 1762: Samuel Chase, educated by his father who was a graduate of St. John's College, Cambridge University, was elected in 1764; and William Paca, who graduated from the College of Philadelphia in 1759, was elected in 1767. A fourth, Charles Carroll of C;mollton, who was educated at St. Orner's, France, and at the Middle Temple, London, was barred from elective office because he was a Catholic but joined them in their political demonstrations. All four men belonged to the Sons of Liberty, a group formed in Boston to protest the Stamp Act. Lord Baltimore's favorite revenue source became a casualty of the storm raised by that measure. Paca, Chase, Johnson, and Canoll led "out-of-doors" protests that upset Daniel Dulany of the Council, a constitutional lawyer. He thought action through legislative channels more proper. With three other members of the Council who favored establishment of a college- Francis Jenckins Henry, Henry Hooper, and Charles Goldsborough- Dulany prepared and signed a brief addressed to Lord Baltimore that challenged the proprietor's right to exact fees from keepers of inns and ordinaries. It said that the monarch who had given him his charter had no such right under common law. Between the expiration and the renewal of a statute to regulate ordinalies, they had often operated under common law (1766 was between statutes). Therefore, the propri· etor could not collect license fees until the Assembly passed the necessary statute. 27 Convinced by this argument, or more likely by the force of events, Lmd Baltimore relinquished his claim to revenue from this source.28 The lower house was then free to appropriate it to some provincial use. If those who wanted a college in Maryland were heartened by this victory, they were soon disappointed. The lower house did not then appropriate the revenue to establish a college but used it for general purposes instead, leading some men to think that members of the lower house were more interested in testing the prerogatives of Lord Baltimore than in founding a college. At the end of the sixties local school boards throughout the province tried to improve existing schools. Negotiations led to the merger of some county schools, a strategy that aimed to produce larger incomes and attract better teachers. In the seventies three mergers were accomplished: Somerset and Worcester County Schools into Eden Academy (1770); St. Mary's, Charles, and Prince George's County Schools into Charlotte Hall (1774); and Calvert County School into Lower Marlborough Academy (1778).29 In 1766 King William's trustees advertised for "An usher capable of teaching the English language, Writing, Surveying and Arithmetick," 30 while searching for a person to replace Isaac Dakein, whom they had fired31 Daniel Dulany (his brother Walter was a trustee of King William's, and both brothers had sons of FLETCHER 35

school age) talked with a Mr. Davidson, hoping he might "be got for the Free-School of Annapolis," and that "a subscription [might] be obtained that would give him a reasonable support." He also mentioned a Virginia clergyman, saying, "I am very much induced to think that all who have sons to educate here have great interest in his settling in Mmyland." 32 This was Rev. Jonathan Boucher, who was then operating a school in Virginia and who would later become Rector of St. An!le's (1771) and conduct a small school in Annapolis. But neither he nor DavidSon became master of King William's School. It was clear that the school needed more income to attract a good master. So after many years the trustees sold a twenty-year lease on Kentish House in Annapolis.33 And on 6 May 1769 Horatio Sharpe, Benedict Calvert, Charles Carroll, Walter Dulany, John Ridout, Thomas Johnson, and Nicholas Maccubbin, "Rector, Governors, Trustees and Visitors of the Free School of Annapolis called King William's School," signed a deed of sale conveying their farm called "Surveyor's Forest" in Dorchester County to Andrew Skinner Ennalls.34 No record reveals who followed Isaac Dakein as Master of King William's School. But many Annapolis schoolmasters were advertising for students in the Gazette. Among them, Thomas Ball held classes at the Free School, where in September 1769 he lost five textbooks. 35 He may have been master. Aware of the repeated efforts to found a college, Governor Robert Eden, who had replaced Governor Sharpe in 1769, told the Assembly that year that he wanted "a well founded Provision for a more liberal institution of Youths to be established." 36 Two years later the lower house approved a means to finance one. Since no new college laws were introduced, one may presume that the general provisions of Carroll's bill of 6 May 1761 prevailed. They were the following: one college, reconstruction of the governor's mansion in Annapolis as a college building, dissolution of King William's School and transfer of its funds upon the opening of a college, and a college governing board composed of the "present" King William's School trustees plus one representative from each county. The sixth attempt to finance a college (1771) appeared in the last paragraph of "an Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit." It appropriated $42,666.67 to be accumulated from interest on bills of credit to be issued, the money to be locked as received in iron chests. This appropriation was approved in the lower house. But the upper house, in evident pique because it had not been consulted beforehand, killed the entire bill. It said that if the upper house was not allowed any say in the disposal of money got from the issue of bills of credit, the lower house might also exclude it "from considering what system of Instruction and Enforcement of Discipline would be most proper." 37 Two years later, however, it voted affirmatively for the same bill it had rejected in 1771. On 21 December 1773, Govemor Eden affixed his signature and the "Great Seal with wax 36 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

appendant" upon "An Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit."38 The sanguine expected a Maryland college to be founded within a few years. Again the trustees of King William's readied themselves to play a full role in the governance of the anticipated Annapolis college. Their Register, John Duckett, advertised for a master, an usher, and a scribe, their appointments to be effective April 1774. The master was offered "an annual salary of fifty-five pounds sterling ce1iain and five pounds currency to be paid by each scholar in the latin school"; the usher "thirty pounds sterling cettain and two pounds cunency paid by each scholar"; and "a scribe who can teach English, writing and aritlunetick, six pounds sterling with every advantage alising from the scholars he instructs and libe1ty to make his own bargain with their parents." In addition, the master was promised a comfortable apartment in the schoolhouse.39 A master was soon appointed, but the school still advertised for an usher and a sc1ibe in April, indirectly reminding applicants that according to Maryland law only members of the Church of England were "properly qualified." (A Somerset 40 county advertisement explicitly stated this requirement. ) Since many of the competent schoolmasters in America were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Maryland. schools suffered because of this prejudicial law. (After the Revolution, John McDowell, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian and a graduate of the College of Phila­ delphia, would be appointed the first president of St. John's.) Throughout 1773 the Assembly kept a jealous eye on the King William's trustees, even though the school was supported by private contributions and an endowment. It enacted a curious bill voiding any gift that would enlarge the school's annual income beyond £200. The "Act of 1696" had allowed £120 for support of a master, an usher and a scribe; the Assembly in 1773 recognized that now much more income was needed, but thought there was a limit. Perhaps it sensed that the trustees were overambitious to govern the hoped-for college and felt it necessary to curb the trustees' efforts. On the other hand, this act strength­ ened the role Annapolitan trustees could play in the management of King William's: it empowered seven of them to act if prior notice of meetings was given to those who resided in Annapolis and to any others temporarily there at meeting time.41 In October 1773 William Eddis wrote a friend in England that the Assembly had "endowed and founded a college for the education of youth in every liberal and useful branch of science ... to be conducted under excellent regulations." The next October he wrote that the brig Peggy Stewart had been burned with all its cargo of tea in the Annapolis harbor. In September 1775 he was "almmed by the beating of drums and a proclamation for the inhabitants to assemble at the Libe1ty Tree" and resolved to compel all Loyalists to quit the city. No such resolve was promulgated but by the fall of 1776 he and Governor Eden had left Mmyland.42 Two months earlier the Free School building had become a military hospital. 43 FLETCHER 37

After independence, the General Assembly continued to control Maryland schools. The Constitution of 1776 required all men in positions of public trust, including school trustees, to take an oath of allegiance to the new state, an oath many refused to take. As a result the King William's board and many county boards were decimated. To reconstitute the King William's board, the Assembly in 1778 declared that "from the absence of some, disqualification and resignation of others ... it would be )egal for three tmstees [of King William's School] to meet together, consult, direct and manage the affairs of the said school and execute the several powers and authority ... as the whole of them together." These three trustees were instructed to meet before 15 July 1778, to elect the number of visitors required by charter and to take the oath of fidelity to the state.44 Four of the trustees who had signed the deed of sale for Surveyor's Forest in 1769 had taken the oath: Charles Carroll the Barrister, Thomas Johnson, Nicholas Maccubbin, and John Ridout. At least three of them in all likelihood appointed the new members necessary to reconstitute the board as instructed by the Assembly. Within two years hopes for a college were again dashed. In 1780 the state confiscated all money· accumulated in the locked iron chests as directed by "An Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit" (1773) to pay for "a just war." 45 The Assembly promised that the $42,666.67 intended for the establishment of a college would be replaced as soon as possible after the return of peace. In the same year legislators passed a law to regulate ordinalies, effective for seven years, empowering the state to collect licen~e fees and impose fines for breach of law.46 (A restatement of this law in 1784 would give tllis revenue by charter to St. John's forever.) Finally, in 1782, the General Assembly chartered a Maryland college. But it was on the Eastern Shore. Under the mastership of Rev. William Smith, former provost of the College of Philadelphia, the Kent County Free School had attracted over one hundred students. Its board (with Smith as chairman) had collected subscriptions worth £5,992. On the strength of this success, it had petitioned the Assembly to charter the school as a college, to be called "Wash­ ington College." According to the charter, one trustee was to be elected from each group of subscribers who together pledged £500; later the St. John's charter included a like plan, except that groups pledging £I ,000 selected trustees. The Washington College charter proposed that a Western Shore college should also be founded to form, with Washington, one state university.47 Accord­ ingly in 1783 Governor Paca asked the General Assembly to give special attention as soon as peace was established to the support of "Religion and Learning." 48 After the signing of the Treaty of Paris in January 1784 the King William's trustees, and others, anticipated establishment of a Western Shore college. Undoubtedly they hoped that it would be located in Annapolis. In August 1784 the King William's trustees announced that the new master, Rev. Ralph 38 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

(Fig. 4)The Reverend William Smith, first provost of the College of Philadelphia, first president of Washington College, and president protem. of St. John's at its opening. Engraved by John Sartain in t880, from the original portrait by Gilbert Stuart, painted 1800. (Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania.)

Higginbotham, "will open a school for the education of young gentlemen in the Greek and Latin languages, preparatory to their entering college." 49 On 3 December 1784 a group met in Annapolis to promote a Western Shore college and choose six subscription agents, three clergy and three laymen, to prepare a bill for founding a college. This bill would be the college charter. Although many legislators were ready to found a Westem Shore college as part of a University of Maryland, it was necessary to persuade them to fund it. The three clerical subscription agents who framed the St. John's charter (Patrick Allison and John Carroll besides Smith) wrote as a provision that the college would receive £1,750 annually from the state. They gave secondary importance to acceptance of the governor's mansion offered by the state, should the college settle in Annapolis. Since some delegates wanted the college located in their home districts, the agents may have thought it politic- as well as just- to postpone the choice of location until the number of trustees required to constitute a board was elected from the Western Shore county subscription lists. They did FLETCHER 39

provide that the choice of a college site should be the first order of business once a duly constituted board was seated. If the board chose Annapolis, it could then accept the mansion as a college building. The charter set a deadline of 1 June 1785 for the election of thirteen trustees who were to meet and decide upon a location of the college by l August of that year. 5° The charter establishing St. John's College was entitled "An Act for founding a College on the Western :'Shore of this state, and constituting the same, together with Washington College on the Eastern Shore, into one University by the name of the University ofMaryland." It passed the House of Delegates on 30 December 1784. Paragraph 22 amended the act for licensing ordinaries passed in March 1780, stating that "the money hereafter collected from ordinary licenses on the Western Shore (with the exception of the city of Annapolis and Baltimore), shall ... be subject to the orders of the visitors and governors of St. John's College." This revenue, with that from several other taxes, would compose the £1,750 yearly income the charter promised. Despite such care not to offend the counties and Baltimore, opposition developed as soon as the appropriation for St. John's became known and a similar but lesser one (£ 1,250) was committed to Washington College in the sarue session. A "Planter" complained in the Maryland Gazette that the "state is burthened with two thousand five hundred pounds per year for ever for the support of two colleges, where gentlemen's children are to be educated at the public expence." An able rebuttal argued that in 1773 "An Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit" had appropriated $42,666.67 or £4,000, for the establishment of a seminary but that "the calamaties of war rendered it necessary to unlock the chest, but with a solemn pledge ... that the money should be replaced as soon as possible and applied for a seminary of learning." The writer had carefully calculated that if that money had been invested, it would by 1785 have yielded at least £3,000 a year.

Thus it appears ... that the college laws are not any new burden on the people, but only a wise and easy provision for the payment of interest on an old debt ... and when every other Debt was to be funded and provision made for the payment of interest till the capital on it be discharged it would be very unjust that the Debt for the rising generation, our own children and posterity, though one of the oldest, and contracted at the commencement of the war, should alone remain neglected ... and ... the taxes imposed are not any 1 except on those who choose to pay them. 5

It took longer than expected to collect subscription lists totaling £1 ,000 each, and to elect the thirteen trustees. So the 1 August deadline passed without the choice of a college site. Contingency plans offered by the charter for selecting a site were not adopted but a bit of advice was that "In the meantime the said agents shall with all diligence increase the number of subscriptions." 40 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

In November the agents asked the Assembly to give them until March 1786 to elect the requisite trustees and begged it to allow the following alterations in the charter provisions for setting up a working board: that seven (instead of thirteen) trustees elected by I March 1786, plus four agents, be allowed to choose a college site, if seven of these eleven agreed on a place; and that nine trustees elected by 1 March 1786 be empowered to conduct college business. The Assembly approved these altyrations.52 Like other subsCiibers King William's was allowed one trustee of its choice for each £1,000 it pledged to St. John's. Unlike other subscribers it did not make its pledge to the subscription agents, but waited until it could negotiate the terms of its conveyance with a St. John's board, as one corporation to another. And before making its pledge, it would ask the St. John's board to grant certain concessions. On 28 February 1786, in the presence of five agents, nine men elected by subscribers were seated as trustees of a St. John's College board. By a cha1ter amendment, nine were enough to conduct business. But instead of voting as a first order of business on a college site, they considered a "Proposition laid before the Visitors and Governors by the Rector and Visitors of Annapolis School [King William's School] in pursuance of 'An Act of Assembly for Consolidating the funds of King William's School with the funds of St. John's College."' A committee representing King William's School requested that the "two trustees they were entitled to elect by virtue of the two thousand pounds they were prepared to pledge immediately, be sworn in as visitors on the St. John's board in time to vote on the location of the college." The committee requested also that "until the college shall be compleated," the school trustees might withhold the residue of their funds (more than £1,000) to maintain their school, now called the Annapolis School. "But they thought that whenever they subscribed it, they should be entitled to the election of another trustee." TI1e St. John's board granted the King William's board both these requests, but refused a request that would allow an Annapolitan donating £1 ,000 to fill any St. John's board vacancy that 3 might occur in the future. 5 Awaiting decision from King William's on these terms, the St. John's board adjoumecl until] March. King William's and St. John's could profit from each other's assets. King William's had long wanted to grow into a college, and St. John's, like all other early American colleges, realized that it had to be founded upon a grammar school. But it was prudent for King William's, obliged as it was to conduct a school for Annapolis youths, to require some indication that the college would settle in Annapolis before parting with its prope11y. The college, on the other hand, had left the question oflocation undecided until the subscribers had elected a sufficient number of trustees to constitute a board. The state, on its part, had offered four acres of ground on which the unfinished governor's mansion stood, if the college settled in Annapolis. There was a least one other town contending FLETCHER 41

for the college, Upper Marlborough, situated near the center of the Westem Shore, a trading market for tobacco where occasional theatricals and fall and spring races were held. But in 1786 the town had neither church nor county school. King William's board had £2,000 in cash, which, if subscribed, would entitle it to elect two trustees to join the nine already seated on the St. John's board. Two of these, John Claggett and William Beanes from Prince George's County, might be expect\'d to vote for Upper Marlborough. The other seven­ William West, Nicholas Canoll, John H. Stone, Richard Ridgeley, Thomas Stone, Samuel Chase, and John Thomas- were likely to vote for Annapolis. The King William's board apparently tested St. John's when it insisted that its two trustees be seated before the college site was voted upon. Such a postponement suggests a breach of the charter- unless in fact a merger was contemplated. King William's had fmfeited its chance to seat its appointees with the first nine trustees by not making its pledge to the subscription agents, who would have conducted an election for the two trustees in time to seat them with the other nine. Five of the nine trustees had to agree to the postponement, or charter variance, to pass it. If at least five voted aye, then the King William's board could anticipate that these five plus its two would ensure a decisive vote for Annapolis. (Later balloting revealed that actually seven of the original nine trustees favored Annapolis.) The St. John's board acceded to King William's request that it be seated before voting on a site, and King William's dropped its request that future vacancies on the St. John's board be filled with Annapolitans. King William's was mainly concerned that the college settle in Annapolis. It expressed no reservations about the way the St. John's board was constituted: both St. John's and King William's boards appointed new members in "perpetual succession." And the two King William's appointees who joined the original nine St. John's tmstees could expect to participate in the choice of thirteen other tmstees to complete a board of twenty-four. Further protection of King William's interest was included in the "Act of Consolidation" of 2 March 1786. It proposed a split of the King William's corporation into two pmts: one part to become St. John's College on 1 March 1786, the other part to operate the Annapolis School until the college opened. If the terms under which King William's conveyed its funds and property to St. John's College should be violated, then the Rector and Visitors of Annapolis School could sue to retrieve the funds and property, and the governor and council of Maryland were instructed to reconstitute the King William's board, which would resume its trust "to fulfill the intentions of the founders and benefactors of the said school, in advancing the interests of piety and leaming." 54 The merger greatly pleased Rev. William Smith, the most energetic of the subscription agents. Smith had canvassed for subscribers during January and February, had taken an active part in King William 's-St. John's negotiations, and 42 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

viewed the cuhnination of his mission as reason for triumph and relief. He wrote on 5 March:

I have been but two Nights in my own House for these 4 weeks past, & am just returned from a Journey of at least 300 miles, which became necessary in the final establishment of our Colleges, & opening the Western Shore one (called St. John's) which is QOW fixed at Annapolis, & everyThing on my Part as an agent appointed by Law for founding & opening it, is now happily & successfully finished, the Subscription being above 12000 pounds beside the public Endowment of 1750 pounds per annum.55

Of the £12,000 that Smith mentions, King William's would contribute at least one fourth. Moreover, the college had no life until the two corporations merged; no business was conducted until the St. John's board had accepted the terms submitted by the King William's board and those contained in the "Act of Consolidation." Of the two institutions, King William's was the viable one in 1786, the flourishing preparatory school ready to grow into a college. Further­ more, it was imbued with an almost century-old determination to survive. By necessity and by design, St. John's College built upon King William's School. Four: 1784: The Year St. John's College Was Named

A Western Shore college was chartered by the Maryland General Assembly in late December 1784 and given the name St. John's College. Contemporary records do not reveal how and why the name was chosen. If the Col1ege was named for a saint there are three strong contenders. First, there is St. John Chrysostom. In 1807 he was a favorite of two of the College's early graduates, John Shaw and Francis Scott Key (class of 1796), who were young poets with literary ambitions. Chrysostom, the "golden-mouthed" Bishop of Constantinople, was like a muse to John Shaw. "By the blessing of St. Chrysostom," he wrote Francis Scott Key on 24 January 1807, "as I am in great haste, and in no less need for our Saint's assistance, I hope you have not forgotten our plans, but will soon be ready in the litany, 0 Sancte Chrysostome! ora pro nobis. I have examined the college library and find many valuable books in it. There is an edition of Chrysostom in twelve volumes, three of which are wanting .... " 1 After 1870 John the Evangelist was generally accepted as the favored saint. Assuming this in a dedication speech at the opening of Woodward Hall on 18 June 1900, John Wirt Randall commented that the Evangelist's name was particularly appropriate for an educational institution because his was a name "suggestive more than that of the other apostles of the relation between a scholar and a teacher." 2 St. John's College at Cambridge University was indeed named for the Evangelist. Randall knew this and also that a college historian of the 1870s had claimed that certain unnamed 1784 incorporators had attended St. John's College, Cambridge. For this reason, it was believed, the Annapolis college had been named "St. John's" after the Cambridge college.3 In 1894 Bernard Steiner introduced another theory about the origin of the College's name. He wrote: "Other authorities say the name [St. John's] was given in compliment to the Masonic fraternity then very strong in Annapolis." 4 It is true that the seal of St. John's College, as well as that of Washington College, founded in 1782, bears a Masonic symbol. It is also true that the old Masonic 44 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

lodge of Annapolis, warranted by the St. John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1750, was a St. John's lodge. It was a "modem," i.e., descended from the Grand Lodge of England (founded 1717). Other Maryland lodges of the colonial period were chartered by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and were "ancients," or Ancient York Masons. It was customary to call all local lodges that were warranted by Grand Lodges by the generic name, St. John's lodges5 But if the College was nap1ed in compliment to a "masonic fratenrity then very strong in Annapolis," as Steiner suggested, a third saint, John the Baptist, could have been the one honored in the naming of the College. The Masons honored two St. Johns, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. Steiner's statement is also unclear in its reference to an active Masonic fraternity because the old Annapolis St. John's Lodge was moribund after 1764.6 Yet many Masons visited Annapolis in the revolutionary period. They came from the counties of Maryland and other states of the Confederation to attend the Continental Congress, the General Assembly, and the General Courts. They included officers in the Maryland Line7 and other distinguished military figures. Moreover, throughout the state new "ancient" lodges were being wananted under the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge; and members of "modern" lodges who wished to enter into the mysteries of Ancient York Masonry were being "healed." Two Masons in Kent County were active in promoting Ancient York Masonry in Maryland during the 1780s: they were Rev. William Smith and Peregrine Leatherbury, who had been among the incorporators of Washington College in 1782.8 The year before, Smith, the Grand Secretary of the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge, had digested and abridged an Ahiman Rezon, or book of Masonic constitutions, for the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge. Published in 1783, it was a guide to Masons on moral conduct and discretion, and laid out an orderly procedure to be followed at lodge meetings. Repeatedly, it designated the two St. Johns' days, that of the Baptist on June 24 and of the Evangelist on December 27, for special business and festive occasions. 9 But it offers no inforination about the Masonic symbols used in Europe and America on official seals like those of Washington and St. John's colleges. Two books on European Masonry of the period, however, do offer examples of Masonic symbols used as teaching devices. A famous old Russian Mason in Tolstoy's War and Peace described one to Piene Bezuhov when he instructed him in the mysteries of Masomy. The old man pictured a mount raised stone by stone by succeeding generations, on which the temple of wisdom, or Solomon's temple, was erected. 10 This description was an aid in identifying the device adopted for the St. John's seal; a count of the layers of stones in the pile numbers seven, the usual number of steps leading up to Solomon's temple and a number corresponding to the seven Masonic virtues. On the St. John's seal a man climbing aloft carries aT-square. 11 FLETCHER 45

(Fig. 5) Seal of St. John's College adopted in 1793 to imprint the diplomas of the College's first graduates.

(Fig. 6) Seal of Washington College adopted at its opening in 1782, showing three stars symbolizing the three Masonic degrees of St. John's Masonry. (Courtesy of Washington College.) 46 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Another book about European Masonry of this period, Jacques Chailley 's The Magic Flute: a Masonic Opera, 12 is replete with illustrations of Masonic devices. Washington College adopted one that shows a shield hung from a column: three stars on the shield symbolize the three Masonic degrees of St. John's Masonry, apprentice, fellow-craft, and master mason. Key-like tools hold garlands of roses as a drapery above the column to celebrate the enthusiasm that brought about the founding of the college. A picture in Chailley's book13 identifies these tools as miniature trowels used in Masonic rites to "seal" the mouths of initiates, i.e., to remind them of the first Masonic virtue, discretion, or the keeping of secrets. The date on the Washington College seal, 1782, commemorated the year when that college was founded- a time when two well-established Masonic lodges were flourishing in Kent County. 14 If the St. John's seal had been likewise dated with the year when it was chartered, its seal might also constitute evidence of a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis in 1784. But the St. John's seal is dated 1793, the year when the Board of Visitors and Governors ordered that a seal be designed and executed to imprint diplomas for the College's first graduates. 15 Coincidentally, it also commemorated a significant date for Annapolis Masonry. In 1793 the Amanda Lodge No. 12, an "ancient," was founded, creating a brotherhood of Annapolis Masons to help lay the cornerstone of the new capitol at Washington in November 1793. 16 The Masonic device on the St. John's seal dated 1793, then, does not refer to a Masonicfratemity in Annapolis in the 1780s and does not substantiate Steiner's theory. Yet a Masonic enthusiasm was promoting education throughout Maryland in the 1780s. In 1784 the imminent creation of a Western Shore college was greeted with fervor by Freemason William Smith in his introduction to An Account of Washington College. The preamble of the Charter of 1782 published therein described an eventual state university comprised of a Western and Eastern Shore college united under ''one supreme legislative and visitatorial jurisdiction." Smith's uplifting and inspiring introduction was written in the spirit ofthe times:

... For however flattering it may be to consider the growth of these rising states as tending to encrease the wealth and commerce of the world; they are to be considered in another more serious view, as ordained to enlarge the sphere of HUMANITY. In that view the great interest of civil LIBERTY, the parent of every other social blessings, will not be forgotten. . . . We must regard the great concems of religion and another world. We must attend to the rising generation. The souls of our youth must be nursed up to the love of LIBERTY and KNOWLEDGE; and their bosoms warmed with a sacred and enlightened zeal for every thing that can bless or dignify the species .... 17

In the same spirit~ wishing "to attend to the rising generation" and to found a university~ a group of gentlemen met in Annapolis to promote a Western Shore college on 3 December 1784. They ordered FLETCHER 47

that the reverend John Carroll, W1lliam Smith D.O. and Patrick Allison, D.D., together with Richard Sprigg, John Steret and George Digges Esquires, be a committee to complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western Shore, and to publish the same immediately, with a proper preamble for taking in subscriptions . ...

Accordingly, by December 16 the text of "A Draught of a Proposed Act, Submitted to Public Consideration, for Founding a College on the Western Shore of This State, and for Constituting the Same, together with Washington College on the Eastem Shore, into One University, by the Name of The UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND" was released to the public18 One subscription list was actually filled by December 16. Known as the Annapolis list, it bore signatures of sixty-two subscribers who pledged a total of £2703. Those who pledged were planters, legislators, state officials, a banacks­ man, a silversmith, a carpenter, a clergyman, a tavern-keeper, a barber, a sea captain, and all the merchants of Annapolis. The six men ordered "to complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western Shore" were to be known as "subscription agents." They were a clergyman and a layman from each of the three major religious denominations in Maryland, the Roman Catholic, the Presbyterian, and the Protestant Episcopal. Of these men only William Smith was from an Eastern Shore county. The Draught borrowed large portions of the Washington College charter of 1782 but added a new preamble and plan for electing members to the Board of Visitors and Governors. Much else was left out because, as they explained, it would merely repeat similar articles in the Charter of 1782. 19 A letter written by William Smith dated 16 January 1785, told how in early December he had been called "in Conjunction with two Clergymen of other Denominations ... to draft the University Law which we happily did with great Unanimity." 20 While "happily" drafting the "Proposed Act," the subscription agents ex­ panded paragraph 9 of the Charter of 1782- which read "youth of all religious denominations shall be freely and liberally admitted ... according to their merit ... without requiring or enforcing any religious or civel test"~ by adding "without urging their attendance upon any particular worship or service, other than what they have been educated in, or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend." Apparently the authors of the text, which finally became the Charter of 1784, intended that students should enjoy religious liberty and that the college would nurture students in their own faith, for as John Canoll said, it was "an intended stipulation that provision be made, from the College funds, if necessary, to procure all of them opportunities to frequent their particular forms of worship." 21 48 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

To this paragraph on civil liberty in the Draught, the Charter of 1784 added an introductory clause for emphasis, saying that the college would be established "upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles"- and made several other changes as well. Where the Draught had read "upon the most liberal and catholic plan," the Charter of 1784 omitted the word "catholic." 22 William Smith explained the necessity for omitting "and catholic." The word "catholic," he wrote, "altho.ugh intelligible enough to many, yet it is not approved by many others, on account of the vulgar application to one particular church." 23 He continued to use it in his own letters, however, in its all-embracing sense. When the Charter of 1784 was finally enacted, he proudly commented that "Maryland has been among the last of the States in her Provisions for Learning; but none of them can boast so noble a Foundation as her University now is. " 24 In May 1783, eighteen months before the passage of the Charter of 1784, William Paca and his Council sent a message to the General Assembly recom­ mending that the legislature give special attention to two issues as soon as Peace was firmly established: "Trade and Commerce" first, and then "Matters of so high Concernment as Religion and Learning.'' For the latter they recommended "Public support for the Ministers of the Gospel," which the Maryland Bill of Rights allowed, and, acknowledging the strong public encouragement given Washington College as shown by the

Zeal of the Eastern Shore for the Advancement of Learning that of Sum of five thousand pounds which the Act required ... has been nearly doubled in less than One Year, they trusted that

the General Assembly will think this College deserving of their further Attention and favors, and will extend their Views to the establishing and encouraging other Seminaries of Learning in this State. 25

As a matter of fact, the three clergy agents who were commanded in Decem­ ber 1784 to "complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western Shore" had been engaged in "Religion and Learning" all their lives. All were teachers and educators. John Carroll was a graduate of St. Orner's College in France and of the Jesuit academy at Liege, Belgium; he was a priest and a teacher at the Jesuit college in Bruges, until the Jesuit order in Belgium was suppressed by papal bull in 1773. In 1784 he was organizing the American Catholic Church. Patrick Allison, a graduate of the College of Philadelphia and later a teacher there, came to Maryland in 1764 to become pastor of the Baltimore Presbyterian Church for the remainder of his life. And last, there was William Smith, a graduate of the University of Aberdeen, the young Scotsman whom Benjamin FLETCHER 49

Franklin had recruited to develop the Philadelphia Academy into a college; he had been the teacher of Natural Philosophy and provost of the College of Philadelphia from the time the College was chartered in 1753 until the revocation of its charter in 1779. In 1784 he was rector of Chester Parish, Kent County, and president of Washington College, as well as a leader in the fonnation of the new Protestant Episcopal Church.26 All three were polemipists who wrote pamphlets, letters to the newspapers, and petitions to the Assembly on behalf of their particular churches, sometimes attacking one another. Though sectarian interests divided them, the rise of Freemasonry may have created a climate that allowed them to work in concert for the advancement of learning. John Carroll indeed described a new kind of religious freedom in America following the Revolution:

in these United States our Religious System has undergone a revolution if possible, more extraordinary, than our political one. In all of them free toleration is allowed to Christians of every denomination; and particularly in the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, a communica­ tion of all Civil rights, without distinction or diminution, is extended to those of our Religion. This is a blessing and advantage, which it is our duty to preserve & improve with utmost prudence.27

Either Freemasonry or the Spirit of '76, or both, created such a climate. In the fall of 1784 John Carroll was replying to a "Letter to the Roman Catholics of Worcester," which was published in three different issues of the Maryland Gazette28 after having been printed as a pamphlet in Philadelphia the previous winter. The author, Charles Wharton, his cousin and an ex-Jesuit, had recently joined the Protestant Episcopal Church. In the "Letter" he explained to his former congregation in Worcester, England, the doctrinal reasons for his leaving the Roman Church. All three parts are scholarly, referring often to the church fathers, and especially to St. John Chrysostom, who he claimed supported his Protestant view of the Scriptures. Carroll, a convinced Catholic, took the opposite view and refuted this argument in a pamphlet, "An Address to Roman Catholics on Wharton." 29 He quoted from the volumes of Chrysostom that he found in the "public library" in Annapolis.30 Responses from Catholic readers assured him that he had succeeded in reaffirming their faith. When Wharton published another letter, "To the Roman Catholics ofMaryland," 31 Carroll refused to reply: "I shall forbear reviving a spirit of controversy, least it should add fuel to some spark of religious animosity." 32 CaiToll was eager that Catholic youths and teachers seize the opportunity offered them by the Maryland colleges. 33 Patrick Allison, on the contrary, was far more contentious in 1783 and 1784 because he saw a concerted effort to set up a new established church in Maryland. Along with Anabaptists, Methodists, Quakers, and Roman Catholics, he contin­ ued to smart from having been taxed for the support of the Church of England 50 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

in Maryland before 1776. Immediately after Governor Paca's address in May 1783, he began writing a series of articles in the Maryland Journal against the tax proposed to "support the ministers of the Gospel." Allison thought the tax could only benefit the new Protestant Episcopal Church, which had been desig­ nated heir to all real property of the old established Church of England. More­ over, because its membership and property already exceeded that of the other sects, the tax would extend its ,influence out of all proportion to that enjoyed by the others, and, indeed, lead to a new church establishment. To prevent such a development he suggested that former Church of England property be divided among all the sects who had paid a church tax before the Revolution. 34 The first of Allison's aiticles (published 15 July 1783) attacked the clergyman nominated by the Maryland Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church to become the first bishop of Maryland, William Smith. Allison used his rapier pen exuberantly:

Nor is it my wish to disturb the reverend Dr. S. in his retirement from the world and the things of the world, where he is inhaling copious draughts of sublime contemplation, purifying himself by a course of mental recollection, contri­ tion, and extraordinary devotion, for the mitred honours to which he is destined. 35

Smith took no lasting offence at Allison's attack even though it may have been one of the factors influencing the church to reject him as a candidate for bishop. Smith was perhaps toughened by years of controversy in Pennsylvania before corning to Maryland. In 1758 and 1759, while William Paca and Patrick Allison were attending the College of Philadelphia, Provost Smith was jailed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly on a charge of libel but with the backing of the hustees of the college had continued to conduct classes and to function as provost while in jail.36 An appeal to the King freed him but did not endear him to the Assembly: they already felt threatened because of Smith's efforts to promote the Church of England in Pennsylvania. Finally, in 1779 when they revoked the charter of the College of Philadelphia, he was ousted as both provost and teacher. He then migrated to Chestertown and started a school. This school merged with the Kent County School and Under his direction grew in size and importance to the point where its trustees petitioned the General Assembly of Maryland to charter it as Washington College.37 It seems most unlikely, however, that Smith, the Freemason, would have suggested the name "St. John" to honor a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis at the time when the Draught of a Proposed Act was being written: He would have been afi·aid that such a suggestion might destroy the "great Unanimity" that the committee was enjoying. Furthermore, though many Catholics, and notably John Carroll's brother Daniel, belonged to the Masons, Carroll would have had a deep FLETCHER 51

personal aversion to them, for they had played an active role in the suppression of the Jesuits in Europe. But while he would not have chosen to honor the Masons, most likely he would not have objected to naming the College after his patron saint (who was one of the "Johns"). Allison, however, actually expressed his personal distaste for Masonry when he ridiculed Smith's participation in Masonic purification rites. 38 Moreover, the Presbyterians (like the Jews) con­ sider all members of a cpngregation saints, and they scarcely ever name their institutions after any sairit except St. Andrew and St. Giles. Those two agents, then, Carroll and Allison, would certainly not have suggested the name "St. John" to honor the Masons. On 24 December 1784, ten days after its publication in Annapolis, the Draught of a Proposed Act appeared in Baltimore's Mmyland Journal. Six days later a revised version that incorporated hitherto unpublished sections borrowed from the Charter of 1782 was enacted by the House of Delegates. It included provisions for collecting revenues through licenses and taxes on the Western Shore for the support of the College39 and outlined a policy for the governance of a University of Maryland. Where blanks had been left in the Draught for insertion of a name, "St. John's College" now appeared. The action was a fait accompli at the time the bill was introduced, for the Journal ofthe House reported neither motions nor discussion regarding the College's name. Neither the Mmyland Gazette and theMmy/and Journal, nor the Journals of the Senate and the House of Delegates for the November 1784 Session of the General Assembly, explain what happened. Some special influence was at work in Annapolis during the last week of December 1784. While Governor Paca spent Christmas at Wye Hall on the Eastern Shore, the General Assembly convened every day including Christmas and Sunday in Annapolis. Two major pieces of legislation that he had recommended in the message of 1783 were slated to come up during his absence. One bill embodied the interests of "Trade and Commerce"; the other, the interests of "Religion and Learning." Although promotion of the second, the "University Law" (St. John's College), began early in the session, action on it was delayed until the report from a conference of Maryland and Virginia legislators concerned with "Trade and Commerce" was pushed through the Assembly on December 27. The Journals of the House and Senate report that General Washington and General Gates mrived in Annapolis on December 22. On the same day the following Maryland commissioners were appointed by the Assembly to confer with the Virginia delegation: Senators Thomas Stone, Samuel Hughes, and Charles Carroll; and Delegates John Cadwalader, Samuel Chase, John DeButts, George Digges, Philip Key, Gustavus Scott, and Joseph Dashiell. George Wash­ ington- now the sole Virginian, for General Gates had fallen ill on anival­ was chosen to chair the Conference. 52 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

The Senate and House Journals give the barest facts about the Conference, and the newspapers less. A letter from George Washington, in Annapolis, to the Marquis de Lafayette in Paris on December 23, is more descriptive:

You would scarcely expect to receive a letter from me at this place. A few hours before I set out for it, I as little expected to cross the Potomac again this winter, or even to be fifteen f11iles from home before the last of April, as I did to make a visit in an air-balloon in France. I am here, however, with General Gates, at the request of the Assembly of Virginia to fix matters with the Assembly of this State respecting the extension of the inland navigation of the Potomac, and the communication between it and the western waters; and I hope a plan which will be agreed upon, to the mutual satisfaction of both States and to the advantage of the union at large .... 40

On December 22 five days of unremitting labor began for all the conferees. If there were any parties, balls, or dinners given in honor of Washington between December 22 and 29, 1784, in Annapolis, the Maryland Gazette failed to report them. Near midnight on the 28th Washington wrote James Madison at the Legislature in Richmond: "It is now near 12 at Night, and I am writing with an Aching Head, having been constantly employed in this business since the 22nd without assistance from my Colleagues, Genl. Gates having been sick the whole time, and Colo. Blackburn not attending .... " 41 The Journals of the House and Senate, however, do reveal one strange hiatus in these five days of intense legislative effort. On December 27 the commission­ ers who were preparing a Potomac bill introduced their report in the House of Delegates and received a first and second reading early in the rooming session (only nine dissenting votes were cast). From the House the bill was taken to the Senate, where it was read and ordered "to lie on the table" until the Senate reconvened at five o'clock for a "post meridiem" meeting. The House followed suit and also adjourned for a "post meridiem" meeting, to begin a half hour later than the Senate's. When the Senate reconvened at five o'clock the Potomac bill entitled "An Act for Establishing a Company for Opening and Extending the Navigation on the River Patowmack" had a second reading; the Senate then concurred with the action taken by the House and adjourned, probably no later than six o'clock. The House had reconvened at half past five, and since they had no busine.'>s to transact -their meeting had apparently been called so that they would be on hand if needed by the Senate -had adjourned forthwith. The Potomac bill thus passed both Houses on 27 December 1784, the Festival Day of St. John the Evangelist, the anniversmy celebrated by all Freemasons. On the following day, December 28, the Senate resolved "that an attested copy of the act ... be transmitted to Gen. Washington and Gen. Gates ... signing by the governor will be complied with when he returns to town." FLETCHER 53

On December 29, the House proceeded to take action on the second major bill of the session, the "University Law," which was submitted by gentlemen whose names were on a list of Annapolis subscribers dated 16 December 1784, begging that the General Assembly enact legislation to establish a Western Shore college42 Like the Draught of a Proposed Act which headed all the subscription lists, the Charter of 1784 allowed one vote toward election of a Visitor and Governor to each subscriber of nine pounds or more on any list totaling one thousand pounds. Other provisos in the Chmter for electing members to the Board of Visitors and Governors differed in some significant respects from those in the Draught. Where the Draught specified "person or persons" as sources from whom the agents might solicit conttibutions, and who might form a class of subscribers who could elect one board member, the Charter of 1784 adds "bodies politic and corporate";43 and where the Draught said the last seven members elected to the Board to complete an aggregate of twenty-four "may be chosen from this or any part of the adjacent states," the Charternarrows the geographical field to "any part of this state." The first seventeen members in both documents are required to be residents of the Western Shore.44 These are among the "considerable alterations" to which William Smith refen·ed in a letter to Rev, William White in late December 1784:

Considerable alterations were made in the plan first settled by Mr. Carroll, Dr. Allison and myself, respecting the nice provisos amongst different denomi­ nations in proportion to their subscriptions. The paper was printed off before I came over. But I was told by Carroll of Carrollton, Mr. Sprigg, etc., that the alterations were made in concert with Dr. Allison. I am satisfied, as I hope all our society will be, with the plan as it now is, and as I would have agreed it should originally have been, as I know that a few grains of mutual confidence and benevolence among different denominations of Christians. will be better than splitting and torturing a design ofthis kind with all the provisos possible . . . . CaiToll of CatTollton, Mr. Digges, etc. have subscribed liberally, as it is expected the rest of that society will do. 45

During his less than peaceable sojo1,1rn among the Quakers in Pennsylvania, William Smith had very likely Iemned to call all denominations "societies," a term used by some denominations but very seldom used by the Episcopalians and Catholics to whom he referred in this letter. For example, the rapidly growing denomination of Methodists called themselves "members in society" and their congregations "societies" as late as 1857.46 During Chtistmas 1784 they were organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church at a conference in Baltimore, declar­ ing themselves independent of the British Conference in the choice of their bishops and superintendents; they were also laying plans to found a college of their own to educate their youth. 54 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

In response to the request of the Annapolis subscribers the House of Delegates on 29 December 1784 proceeded to order a committee of seven men- Samuel Chase, George Digges, Allen Quynn, Nicholas Can·oll, John Cadwalader, David McMechen, and Gustavus Scott- to prepare and bring in a bill for "Founding a college on the Western Shore of this State." Chase, Digges, Cadwalader, and Scott had been on the committee to confer with Washington on the Potomac bill; all but Scott and Cadwalader were signers of the Annapolis subscription list dated December 16. The very next day they were ready with the bill. The Journals reveal no additions or conections to the bill as introduced on December 30. The name "St. John's College" as well as any other changes made in the Draught must have been agreed on beforehand. The only recorded discussion or motions on the House floor while the Act was under consideration came from jealous Baltimore town delegates. They proposed that some of the proceeds collected in Baltimore from the taxes and licenses designated for the support of the college be returned to Baltimore. When the question on the total bill finally carne- no changes had been made in the text introduced by the committee- there were 33 yeas and 18 nays. The nays came from the counties farthest removed from Annapolis­ Harford, Cecil, and Washington Counties; the Eastern Shore (they already had a college) and southern Maryland delegates were almost to a man in favor. The one Baltimore delegate who voted yea was David McMechen, a Freemason.47 One year before (23 December 1783), when Washington had resigned as commander-in-chief before the Continental Congress in Annapolis, the Mary­ land House of Delegates had sent him the following message:

having by your conduct in the field gloriously terminated the war, you have taught us, by your last circular letter, how to value, how to preserve and to improve that liberty for which we have been contending. We are convinced that public liberty cannot be long preserved, but by wisdom, integ.rity, and a strict adherence to public justice and public engagements. The justice and these engagements, as far as the influence and example of one state can extend, we are determined to promote and fulfill; and if the powers given to congress by the confederation should be found to be incompetent to the purposes of the union, we doubt not our constituents will readily consent to enlarge them ... 48

Proud to have enlarged the powers of the Confederation by the expeditious passage of Washington's Potomac bill, the Maryland legislators named the Westem Shore college for the day when his bill was enacted, the Feast Day of the Evangelist. (If the Eastern Shore had not already preempted the name for their college, "Washington" might have been a natural choice for the Western Shore college.) Not only was it a day that they had enjoyed in the company of FLETCHER 55

their former commander-in-chief, but it was a day that would have had special significance for Washington the Freemason. George Washington, private citizen in 1784, would have observed the Feast Day of the Evangelist. Young George had been initiated as a Mason in the Lodge at Fredericksburg on 4 November 1752. He attended various Masonic functions while commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, notably the celebration of the anniversary of the Evangelist in Christ Church, Philadelphia, on 28 December 1778, when William Smith preached the sermon. On 23 December 1783 the brethren in the Alexandria Lodge had sent greetings to him on his return home, which he had acknowledged on 28 December as "Yr. Affect. Bro' & obed' Serv'." These were not Christmas greetings that were being exchanged: they were the customary exchange of greetings between Masons on the anniversary of the Evangelist-December 27. On 24 June 1784, the anniversary of St. John the Baptist, another festival day observed by the Masons, Washington was invited to dine with Lodge No. 39 in Alexandria. He had replied, "I will have the honor of doing it." Minutes of Lodge No. 39 for that day record

The Worshipful Master Read to the Lodge a most instructive lecture on the rise, progress & advantages of Masonry & concluded with a prayer suitable to the occasion. The Master & Brethren then proceed'd to Jn° Wise's Tavern, where they Dined & after spending the afternoon in Masonick Festivity, returned again to the Lodge room. The Worshipful Master with the unanimous consent of the Brethren, was pleased to admit his Excellency, Gen1Washington as an Honorary Member of Lodge No. 39.49

Two months after his visit to Annapolis in December 1784, on 28 February 1785, Washington walked in a procession of Freemasons at the funeral of his friend William Ramsay. Moreover, Maryland Masons were particularly in the habit of observing the St. Johns' days with festivities. According to Edward T. Schultz, "it will be observed how scrupulously our Brethren of Maryland in the early times observed the Saint Johns' days and the custom was continued as we shall see by the Lodges in the jurisdictions for many years.''50 It is possible that the Maryland General Assembly returned for a "post meridiem" meeting on 27 December 1784, which adjourned in favor of an evening dinner to celebrate the festival of the Evangelist with Freemason George Washington. The Journals of the House and Senate show that they did adjourn and reconvene in the evening, probably for a joint affair. The House had completed its business for the day; there was no reason for them to reconvene at half past five, one half hour later than the Senate had scheduled their evening meeting, unless it was to participate in some sort of event with members of the Senate, after the Senate had concurred with the House's action on the Potomac bill. The Senate reconvened at five o'clock. An hour would have given them 56 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

ample time to read the Act and concur- no debate or voting was required for this. Their business could have been finished easily by six o'clock- in time for a St. John's dinner. The "post meridiem" meeting scheduled by both Houses on 27 December 1784- a rare event in the recorded history of the two Houses - indicates some special circumstance. Another possibility is that a festive dinner was held during the afternoon recess even though a majority of the legislators were not Masons. Ce1tainly a number of them were Masons. Yet even those who were not accepted Masonic rituals. Masonry provided an accepted ceremonial in the young republic; Wash­ ington, for example, as well as many other prominent men, was buried with Masonic rites. Nonetheless, in spite of much interest in Freemasonry in Annapolis during the 1780s there was no active Annapolis lodge in 1784. But gentlemen of the town enjoyed several social and literary clubs, notably the Hominy and Tuesday Evening Clubs, where subjects of literary and philosophical interest- and Freemasonry perhaps- were discussed by "enlightened men." The counties of the state and Baltimore, on the other hand, had only their Masonic lodges for fraternal occasions and for intelligent conversation. Also, Washington, the Freemason, was aware that a Western Shore college was being founded as part of a University of Maryland; he knew that an Act for establishing it would be introduced after he left Annapolis. Just a week later, on 5 January 1785, he wrote Samuel Chase, a member of both the committee to confer on the Potomac bill and the committee to present the Charter of 1784 to the House of Delegates, that

the attention which your assembly is giving to the establishment of public schools, for the encouragement of literature, does them great honor: to accomplish this, ought to be one of our first endeavours; I know of no object more interesting. We want something to expand the mind, and make us think with more liberality, and act with sounder policy, than most of the States do. We should consider that we are not now in leading strings. It behooves us therefore to look well to our ways. 51

Washington was clearly interested in~ the grander scheme of which the Western Shore college was a part- the University for "the encouragement of literature"- and his letter showed that he must have talked about the bold scheme with Samuel Chase and perhaps others. When eleven members were finally elected to the Board of Visitors and Governors in early 1786 from the various classes of subscribers, the Board was duly constituted. Under the date of21 March 1786 they published the following notice: "the subscribers of St. John's College, by order of the visitors and govemors, are hereby requested to make their first payment to the subscriber, treasurer to the college, on or before the first day of June next. [signed] FLETCHER 57

BENJAMIN HARWOOD."52 Previous to this, all notices published by the subscription agents had been addressed to "subscribers of St. John's or the Western Shore College." ln the notice dated 21 March 1786 "Western Shore College" was omitted, and "St. John's College" appeared in roman type, alone, for the first time. "St. John's College" became the corporate name when enacted in the Chatter of 1784. The tradition promulgated in 1870, which said that the college was named by its incorporators after an English institution, had little basis. If honoring a noted English college had been the reason for calling the Annapolis college "St. John's," few of the Maryland populace would have been pleased so soon after the conclusion of a bloody war with Britain. In 1971 the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe, were persuaded that prospective students and donors were repe11ed by the name "St. John's College," and they considered adopting a secular name instead.53 At this time, President Richard D. Weigle searched the student rolls at St. John's College, Cambridge- and also those at St. John's College, Oxford -'-to discover which men associated with the 1784 incorporation had actually registered there. Evidently the generally accepted theory that the Annapolis college had been named after St. John's College, Cambridge (or Oxford), which went unquestioned for many years , reflected the anglophilia of the 1870s rather than the sentiment of 1784, which was anglophobia. For no names of men directly tied with the founding of the Maryland college were found. Then, as a preliminary step in effecting a change in name, a committee ofthe Board sent a questionnaire to all alumni, students, and faculty to gather their reactions. Response from the group was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing to operate as "St. John's College," a name now rich with associations gathered over the years, including the 1937 adoption of a curriculum nationally known as 4 the St. John's Program. 5 The Board proceeded no further. In 1786 the name already had strong associations, and the first Board of Visitors and Governors continued to use it. They did not revert to "Western Shore College," or any other name, although through process of law they could have done so. Indeed "St. John's College" proved so acceptable that it prevailed through the first stormy half-century of the college's history, and long after participants in the naming had died. But no one had bothered to record the circumstances from living memory. Records show, however, that a remarkable legislative performance did take place on the Feast Day of St. John the Evange­ list, 27 December 1784, when on behalf of their good friend, George Washington, Maryland legislators enacted the first piece of cooperative legislation among the various states in the Confederation following the definitive "Treaty of Peace." They were naturally proud of a name which reminded them of that day, and they adopted it for the new college several days later. 58 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Thus, even though there are no contemporary records stating why the college was called St. John's, one could infer that it was in honor of the Evangelist. Coincidentally, it was in compliment to the Masonic fraternity of Annapolis in 1784. Perhaps some few were reminded of the Cambridge college as well, although no contemporary record suggests this. It is hard to understand why a cloud of mystery has ever since enveloped the circumstances of the naming;' But if Masons were responsible, one could expect secrecy about their role. Discretion, the keeping of secrets, is the first of the Masonic virtues. Five: John McDowell, Federalist: President of St. John's College

In the spring of 1790 Professor John McDowell was the dark horse among possible candidates for president of St. John's College. The college trustees had advertised that they prefen-ed "a Stranger or some Gentleman of Great Character from Europe." On 5 May Rev. William Smith wrote Rev. William West, chairman of the trustees, that if such a candidate offered himself, he might not "suit the American Genius." (Smith, now provost of the University of Pennsylvania, had presided as president pro tern. at the opening of St. John's the previous Novem­ ber.) "I have the interest of that Seminary [St. John's] and its future success much at Heart . ... were I not too advanced in years, I am not certain whether I might not have offered my Services once more as head of one of the Maryland Seminaries [he had been Washington College's first president] .... but my Family is attach'd to Pennsylvania." Taking himself out of the race- and disparaging the notion that a "Stranger" or'' Great Character from Europe" was preferable to a qualified native- Smith opened the field to McDowell of the St. John's faculty." It would have been well," Smith continued," if the Assembly had restored the Funds previous to an Election [of legislators]."1 How each election would affect their funding wonied the trustees too. Although it was a common practice among trustees of their era to appoint a distinguished clergyman of their own denomination (a majority of the St. John's trustees were Episcopalians) to head their colleges, they acted othetwise. Being politically enlightened, they demonstrated in 1790 that the college was open to students and faculty of all denominatons as their charter stated. They passed over Rev. Ralph Higginbotham, rector of St. Anne's Church, also on the faculty, although his profile nearly matched their ad. He was an Anglican clergyman from Waterford, Ireland, educated in Europe. There is no indication that he wanted to be president. They appointed a Presbyterian, John McDowell, president of the College, and a Catholic, Bishop John Carroll, chairman of their board. 60 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

The trustees were honored to have Carroll join their ranks. He was America's foremost Catholic educator as well as America's first Roman Catholic bishop. He represented a prominent Maryland family who had promoted the College. McDowell, on the other hand, had no prominent family connections in Maryland. His Maryland fliends consisted of alumni of the College of Philadelphia, where he taught without professorial rank after his graduation, and colleagues from Cambridge, where during the preceding seven years while teaching school he had prepared for admission to the Dorchester County bar. For five years he had practiced law in Dorchester County. Presented with these modest credentials, the St. John's trustees relied on a judgment fanned during his year on the faculty, that McDowell "suited the American genius" and could head the college. "The vote being unanimous was not a little flattering," wrote Charles Goldsborough in congratulation. "I always was sure that the delay ... would, by extending your acquaintance among the Trustees, ensure it [the presidency] to you." 2 The tmstees and McDowell shared an enthusiasm for the federal Constitution just adopted but they did not share a common background. The trustees had grown up in well-established tidewater communities on the Chesapeake near pmts where English vessels routinely docked. John McDowell had grown up in a landlocked valley where the Scotch-Irish settlers often took the law into their own hands. He was born in 1751, the second son of John and Mary Maxwell McDowell's twelve children, on a fann near Marks in Peters Township, Cum­ berland County, Pennsylvania. It lay in the Great Cove under Pamell Knob of the Tuscarora range. From age five to age twelve he lived intermittently within a stockade around the West Conococheague Prebyterian Church called White Church. The stockade protected families from Indians on the rampage during outbreaks of the French and Indian wars. Fires set by Indians twice burnt his log home to the grmmd.3 During such turmoil he learned to read, write, and figure, all the while being taught the tenets of his Presbyterian faith. TI1e New England Primer and P;ke's Arithmetic would have been his texts. According to a grand-nephew, "he was early taught the Bible, the 'Shorter and Larger Catechism,' and the 'Confession of Faith' ... these of themselves being good training for the young mind." 4 For three years he attended John King's L-atin school, until King's sister was massacred and her horne, which served as the schoolhouse, was bumt (1763). King then left Conococheague for the east5 Reading, and lessons learned in the church, the field, and at the crossroads rounded out McDowell's education. According to a Presbyterian historian, at age ten, during a Presbyterian prayer session when the frontier was under siege, John experienced a conversion. 6 He also leamed from working in the fields, for surveying was a school in mathematics for many colonial youths. After the Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary dispute was settled, his father employed sur­ veyors to prepare a valid deed for the Pennsylvania Land Office to replace the FLETCHER 61

warrants under which his grandfather had settled in the 1730s7 John may have learned his geometry and trigonometry by participating in the survey. He learned principles of economics, such as what is a fair price, at the crossroads in Marks, where pony trains carrying goods from the east filed through on their way west. Here frumers, millers, and hunters bartered their grain, flour, and skins for manufactured goods. They lived in a subsistence economy without money. They were landlocked between ~he east and west branches of the Conococheague Creek, whose beautiful swift rapids powered their mills but were not navigable. Early experience in barter trade left him with an appreciation for money- not just for what it could buy, but for its convenience. In later years he often acted as broker for his planter clients in Maryland who needed to borrow between crops. He was shrewd in the investment of his own money. When McDowell was seventeen his former teacher, John King, visited West Conococheague on the eve of his ordination to the Presbyterian ministry. He had just won a degree in theology from the College of Philadelphia. The elders of the White Church - John McDowell's father was one of them - persuaded him to become their pastor8 They had had none since 1757. Not only did John King's example encourage McDowell to enter the College of Philadelphia, but King served as an intermediary between him and the college authmities to assure them of the youth's competence. Since McDowell's parents had no money to pay his college tuition, anangements were made for him to tutor less advanced students in exchange for his tuition and board. John King's classmate, John Montgomery, a member of the college faculty, sponsored McDowell, guaranteeing that his tuition would be paid quarterly." McDowell entered the College of Philadelphia in the fall of 1768, the first youth raised on the frontier to be admitted. Throughout the year Provost William Smith and Professors Ewing and Williamson on the college faculty joined other mathematicians and astronomers in America and Europe in prep~rations for the observation of the Transit of Venus to take place on the third of June. The first number of the American Philosophical Society's Transactions published their remarkably accurate calculations preliminaty to and during the Transit. Three years later at commencement John McDowell gave the English oration entitled "On the Advantages of studying History." Soon after graduation in Smith's absence McDowell conducted the provost's class in natural philosophy, assisted with the apparatus by David Rittenhouse. Three members of the Class of 1771 joined the faculties of three colleges founded after the Revolution: Samuel Armor, vice president of Washington College; Robert Davidson, acting President of Dickinson College; and John McDowell, president of St. John's College. Like his classmates McDowell fought in the Revolution. Unlike them he served as a private (until he became ill), not an officer. One classmate, Samuel Hanson of Maryland, served as a surgeon on Washington's staff. 10 62 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

After the Revolution, by 1782, four of McDowell's classmates but not McDowell had completed graduate studies to qualify for professorial appoint· ments, graduate studies at this time being the three professions of medicine, law, and theology. Because of a weak voice McDowell felt himself unfit for the ministry. When Judge Robert Goldsborough, whose nephew Charles was McDowell's student at the University of the State of Pennsylvania (successor to the College of Philadelphia.), invited McDowell to read law in his Cambridge, Mary land office, McDoweil seized the opportunity. To support himself while preparing for the bar, McDowell conducted a school in Cambridge. In 1783 he was admitted to the Dorchester County bar and in 1784 to the Franklin County bar in Pennsylvania (Franklin had been carved from Cumberland County and included Peters Township). But he chose to stay in Dorchester, where he soon had a lucrative law practice and many congenial friends. 11 Meanwhile in Annapolis King William's School and the newly chartered St. John's College had merged. In March 1786 one of the King William's School trustees, Alexander Contee Hanson (brother of McDowell's deceased classmate, Samuel Hanson), joined the college board. He was promptly appointed to a committee authorized to "contract for the repair of and addition of two wings to Bladen's Folly, with sanguine expectations that in less than twelve months ... a grammar school will flourish within these walls." 12 For three years efforts to open the college stalled while Hanson contributed a series of articles to the Mmyland Gazette against the emission of paper money and, under the pseud­ onym "Alistides," rallied support in Maryland for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Hit by the depression, subsclibers to the College were unable to pay their pledges. After ratification of the Constitution, which prevented state governments from printing paper money, the economy improved. In the spling of 1789 the trustees of St. Johu's had resources enough to appoint two professors and to open the College. They offered the professorship of mathematics to John McDowell and the professorship of languages to Rev. Ralph Higginbotham, and ordered that two rooms in Bladen's Folly be made ready for classes. 13 (They never added the wings proposed earlier.) Following a visit to his parents McDowell appeared before the trustees in August to accept his appointment. Several weeks later he: wrote his father from Cambridge, "I have determined to remove to Annapolis. At present I expect it will be about the middle of November.... I shall ... have the satisfaction of being near my friends and hearing more frequently from them." 14 The friends he referred to comprised a group of 1ising young Federalists. All had been members of the lower house or senate. Three had been delegates to the Convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. Four would be elected to Con­ gress, two received high federal appointments and two became governor of Mary1and. 15 They conversed and conesponded with each other, commenting on the Declaration of Independence and its endowing all men with the right to life, FLETCHER 63

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; they noted that black slaves among them had been awakened politically and would inevitably demand their freedom. 16 In the November 1789 Session of the Maryland Legislature, Nicholas Hammond introduced "An Act to Promote the Gradual Abo1iton of Slavery," only to arouse such an uproar in the Assembly that it tabled the bill. A determination to preserve the federal union silenced even those bold enough to speak about the certain kind of property that genuinely embarrassed them, and they foresaw the struggle for its abolition ahead. Of these friends William Tilghman and William Hindman manumitted their slaves by their wills. 17 Almost as soon as McDowell arrived in Annapolis his friends one by one moved away. In 1790 John Henry left Annapolis for the U.S. Senate. By 1800 both William Vans Murray and William Tilghman were gone, Murray to the Hague and Tilghman to a federal judgeship in Peunsylvania. For a decade the College flourished. Until1800 the College attracted students from all over Ma1yland and many from out of state. Eighteen students enrolled from McDowell's old home, Dorchester County. 18 One August day he accom­ panied sixteen-year-old Robert H. Goldsborough, then in his junior year at St. John's, to his home "Myrtle Grove" in Talbot County, arriving "well, tho' a little fatigued as the Sun became very watm. "19 Spring of 1791 was a season for a great celebration when President George Washington visited the campus. In May 1793 the College publicly examined the highest classes in the mathematical and philsophical schools, giving "convincing proof of the great exertions of the faculty on behalf of those committed to their care." 20 Nonetheless, in 1793 the House of Delegates voted to withdraw all appropriations from Maryland's two colleges, which, they said, educated the sons of rich men at the expense of those less well-to-do who would really benefit from the establishment of local schools. In defense of the colleges (St. John's and Washington College), Nicholas Canol!, chairman of the St. John's board, questioned the worth of the county schools that had been established by an act of the Assembly in 1723. "No great benefits ... were delived from the free-schools formerly established," he main­ tained.Z1 While it was true that many of the county schools established by the Act of 1723 did not survive the Revolution, Maryland's determination to have local schools had begun in 1694 and the first academy, King William's School, was chartered in 1696. Federalists in the senate were conciliatory in their defense of the colleges, advising delegates that "We shall be at all times willing to concur in any well digested plan for establishing schools, in order to place education within the reach of every citizen of this state and render it more diffusive through all classes of society."22 ConcuiTence between the two houses eluded them, however, as a core of moderate Federalists in the senate was replaced by more rigid party members, and a growing representation from Republican Baltimore Town and the western counties gained strength in the lower house. Rancor between the two 64 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

(Fig. 7) John McDowell (1751-1820), painted by Robert Field. Collection at Mrs. Clyde Gritten. (Courtesy at Mrs. Griffen and the Frick Art Reference Library, New York, #4421.) parties was further exacerbated by differences of opinion over who was the enemy, England or France. In 1801 McDowell, missing his friends and weary of the turmoil, offered his resignation. The trustees persuaded him to stay on as necessary to the college's survival, though he knew that it was only a matter of a few years before the college's entire funds would be withdrawn: In 1806 St. John's lost its yearly income. It also lost McDowell. Two trustees at the University of Pennsylvania who had been one class below him at the College of Philadelphia, Judges William Tilghman and Nathan Levy, persuaded him to become professor of Natural Philosophy and then third Provost of the University. Impressed by his success at St. John's, they hoped that he could infuse the spirit of the old College of Philadelphia into the University. Before leaving Annapolis McDowell wrote Judge Tilghman that he wanted to take Joseph Williams, a black boy, with him to Pennsylvania, where by law no slaves could be imported. He wanted to take him, McDowell explained, "both on his' account, and on my own." He would manumit him but could he have him bound for seven years. 23 Joseph went with him to Philadelphia, and later, when Joseph had been left "to his own discretion," McDowell wrote that he would "be glad to hear he has made good use of the libe1ty he has." 24 Once in Philadelphia FLETCHER 65

McDowell was guardian for Charles Goldsborough's two daughters while they attended Mrs. Garland's School. Their father wrote them not to become "too fond of pleasure and amusement for country Ladies." He also counseled them as how best to write their school reports, saying that "when you begin to write, the Book should be put by, and the composition should be produced from the reflection, and reasoning of your mind." 25 At the commencement in 1807 the University of Pennsylvania confened an honorary doctor of laws degree on McDowell. After three years as provost, he resigned because of ill health. He spent 1811 and the years of the War of 1812 in Franklin County among relatives. He practiced law again, but he missed the company of friends he had enjoyed in Cambridge, Annapolis, and Phila­ delphia. He remained a confirmed Federalist in Republican Pennsylvania, agreeing with Maryland's three congressional representatives (his friend, Charles Goldsborough, was one of them) that the United States should not have declared war against Britain, calling it "this wicked and impolitic war [that will] ... end in the ruin of our unhappy country which begins to feel the heavy curse of bad rulers."26

(Fig 8) William Tilghman (1756-1827), painted by Charles Willson Peale. (Cour­ tesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.) 66 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

The trustees of St. John's never forgot him. Encouraged because the legisla­ ture appropriated $1,000 per annum to St. John's and $25,000 per annum for the support of public schools, and by the election of a federalist governor, they invited McDowell to return as president. He did not retum on their first invitation (1812), but when they asked him again in 1815 he accepted. Rev. Alexander Conlee Magruder, chairman of the board, gave Bishop Kemp the good news that "Dr. McDowell has agreed to take charge of the college." 27 Settled once more in Annapolis, he soon regretted his retmn. "I always considered the revival of St. John's from its miserable ruins, as an expetiment, the success of which was very doubtful," he wrote. "However, as I promised to give what assistance I could towards it this winter, I consider myself bound to make every exertion I can in so laudable an undertaking, for it is generally felt and confessed that a good Seminary is much wanted in this state. Yet from the Legislature such is the state of parties, we can have no expectation of assistance, though each may confess it ought to be afforded .... But there is no contending against time, and the undertaking is now, I fear, too arduous for me." Even more discouraged by February 1816 he wrote, "TI1is place is as different from what it formerly was, such are the deteriorating effects of democracy, that I feel my attachment to it much diminished." And in December he concluded that "St. John's seems hopeless". The following fall the Federalists elected a governor by a majority of one, a majority managed by bringing a Federalist legislator to the Assembly on a stretcher. "Such is the spirit of party that prevails," wrote McDowell of their antics, "and which I was sorry to find [also] in our board of Visitors and Governors which ought to be free of its baneful influence." Not only had the Assembly done nothing for the College but "the citizens and trustees, who are so immediately and deeply interested in the success of the College, have been very deficient in their exertions to promote it." 28 As early as July 1816, Magruder realised that McDowell's "advanced age and ill health will prevent him from continuing long in the College." 29 Other trustees, too, were disheartened by the lack of support from the Legislature and in 1817 the board in despair tentatively closed it. Thanks to a rallying of alumni support the College was able to reopen in 1818. In December of that year the Federalists elected their last governor, McDowell's friend, Charles Goldsborough, who in his inaugural address spoke of the huge state deficit resulting from the late war. He then spoke of "the great advantages once experienced from the Seminary long ago established at the seat of government ... as particularly deserving of regard." But, he continued, "at this time ... the funds of the state do not admit of an extension of pecuniary aid to purposes of education, beyond the existing appropriations. ''30 Meanwhile McDowell spent some portions of Goldsborough's term at the governor's home "Shoal Creek" outside Cambridge. From there he wrote Judge FLETCHER 67

Tilghman in March 1819, "When I left Philadelphia I had no intention of spending the winter here. But I have spent it, not unpleasantly, nor altogether unprofitably. I have read a good deal ... and amused myself by teaching and grounding Mr. Goldsborough's son in the rudiments of the Latin language." In April 1820 he wrote, "My time has been fully occupied in teaching and reading, particularly Greek of which I have become fonder than of any other study." 31 In late fall he was at his si~ter' s home in Mercersburg, where he died on 22 December 1820.32 · McDowell's reappointment had accomplished little toward reorganizing the College. His return and subsequent departure, however, aroused alumni to come to the aid of their College. Francis Scott Key and Senator Robert H. Goldsborough gave orations that echoed passages from McDowell's commence­ ment address to their class in 1796. With others they organized an effective Alumni Society by the end of the 1820s.33 In his commencement address to the Class of 1796 McDowell had said:

The end of education is to direct the powers of the mind in unfolding themselves, & to assist them in gaining throughout bent & force, to teach it rather how to think .. , than what to think. ... To gain a complete knowledge of science, or indeed of any one branch of it dming the short time, which is spent at a college, is not to be expected. An acquaintance with its general principles & such an improvement of the mental faculties, as will facilitate a further progress in them ... is all that ought reasonably to be expected. I shall ... indulge the pleasing hope, that you will continue to cultivate a general acquaintance with letters, and devote a part of your time to the generous purpose of improving and enlarging your intellectual powers for their own sake .... For the liberal student should enrich his understanding by collecting ideas on all subjects, & these acquisitions, which he makes in other pursuits, will often fumish him with useful helps, for the further prosecution of his own particular one .... I hope you will always treat [the Christian religion] with due reverence & attention, that you will make it the subject of fair & candid discussion but never of ridicule & contempt. ... One branch of moral science is by peculiar necessity entitled to your attention. As_ we live in a country, where the law ought to govem, & where every citizen is directly or indirectly a legislator, the principles of law & government ought to be well understood. Impressed with a proper idea of the difficulty & importance of legislation, I hope, you will labour to build on the foundation already laid, a super structure of political knowledge, which will render you eminently useful to your country & enable you on all occasions to promote its real interest & happiness.34

McDowell, an advocate for a stronger federal government, regretted that the Federalists resorted to such antics in order to stay in power. He was also impatient 68 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

with the stalemates that blocked action in a two-party legislature. As a more democratic Maryland evolved, thanks to a two-party system that forced the sharing of power, he saw old honored ways and institutions like the colleges suffer. But students who had been taught by him that they lived "in a country where the law ought to govern, where every citizen is ... a legislator" were equipped to survive in the new order. Some alumni always sat on the college board of trustees. When the cpllege again received state aid, the trustees decided to devote all that aid to scholarships for worthy candidates selected by Maryland senators, a practice long continued. In the mid-twentieth century the college admitted blacks and then women. In his day McDowell, the Federalist, was a pundit to many and a scholar of national stature. He was a student of the liberal arts and of public affairs until his death. NOTES

Notes to One

1. Basil Sollers, "Education in Colonial Maryland," in B. C. Steiner, History of Education in Maryland (Washington, D.C., 1894), p.l5. Contributions to American Educational History no. 19. 2. "An Act to Establish the Protestant Religion," variously amended until finally signed by the Crown in 1701 under the title "An Act for the Establishment of Religious Worship in the Province According to the Church of England." 3. Sollers, p. 20 n. 4. "Act for Establishing Free Schools" [1696]. In Archives of Maryland 19:420-30 (hereafter referred to as Archives). 5. Sollers, p. 22. 6. Thomas Fell, Some historical accounts of the Founding of King William's School, and its subsequent establishment as St. John's College (Annapolis, 1894), p. 8. See also Sollers, pp. 19, 20. 7. Sollers, p. 22. 8. Archives 19:252. Known as the Annapolitan Library, it was the most exten­ sive of the libraries sent by Dr. Bray to the colonies. Called by him a "Provincial Library" to distinguish it from the parish libraries, it was collected to cover universal knowledge. Along with the Fathers of the Church, Boyle, Descartes, Hobbes, and classical authors are included. Accepted by the Assembly for the free use of the people, it was called the "Publick Library." From the possession of King William's School, in whose schoolhouse it was placed on arrival in 1700, it has descended to St. John's College, Annapolis. · 9. The Society for the Preservation of Christian Knowledge and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. 10. Sollers, p. 22 n. 11. Colonies where the Church of England was established were no more anxious to have resident bishops than the Congregationalist northern colo­ nies. A bishop had direct communication with the Crown and was both politically powerful and expensive to support. After the Revolution when state constitutions had separated church and state, churches that were episcopally organized, like the Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Methodist, elected bishops. 12. William Stevens Perry, ed., Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Churches (Printed for the Subscribers, 1878), 4:59. 13. Lois Green Carr and David William Jordan, Maryland's Revolution of Government 1689-1692 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. I. 70 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

14. Ethan Allen, Historical Notices of St. Anne's Parish in Anne Arundell County, Maryland: Extending from 1659 to 1857, a period of 208 years (Baltimore: P. des Forges, 1857). In MHS Archives. 15. J. E. Morpurgo, Their Majesties' Royall Colledge: William and Mary in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centw·ies (The Endowment Association of the College of William and Mary, Inc., 1976), p. 50. 16. Commissary James Blair to Gov. Francis Nicholson, 3 December 1691, in William and Mary College Papers, Folder 7 (College Archives, Swem Library, College of William and Mary). 17. The History of the College of William and Mary (Including the General Catalogue)from its Foundation, 1660 to 1874 (Richmond: J. Randolph & English, 1874), pp. 37-47. For text of the charter see "Charter granted by King WilHam and Queen Mary for the founding of William and Mary College in Virginia," in Henry Hartwell, James Blair, and Edward Chilton, The Present State of Virginia, and the College (Charlottesville: Dominion Books, 1694 ), pp. 72-94. "To the end that the Church of Virginia may be furnished with a Seminary of Ministers of the Gospel, and that the Youth may be piously educated in Good Letters and Manners, and that the Chris­ tian faith may be propagated amongst the Western Indians, to the Glory of Almighty God, to make, found and establish a certain Place of universal Study, or perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other good Arts and Sciences, consisting of one President, six Masters or Profes­ sors, and an hundred scholars more or less, according to the Ability of the said College, and the Statutes of the same to be made, encreased or changed by certain Trustees nominated and elected by the General Assembly." The Statutes could not be written until six professors were in place, which was not until 1727. 18. Perry, 4:59. 19. "Charter ... for William and Mary College." 20. Archives 20:341, 342. 21. Archives 20:235, 237. 22. Archives 19:36, 49. 23. Archives 19:51. 24. "An Act for the Incouragement of Learning and the Advancement of the Natives of this Province," in Archives 19:49, 100, 101. 25. See Sollers, pp. 21, 22. 26. Archives 19:276, "Imposition upon Ffllrrs and Skins to be Imployed for the maintenance of a ffree school or schools," passed October 1695. 27. Archives 19:252. 28. Archives 19:447,463,492,493. See also Sollers, p. 21. 29. "Act for Establishing Free Schools" [1696]. 30. Archives 29:287. 31. M. L. Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland in Annapolis, Publication of Hall of Records Commission, 1954. 32. "Annapolis, May the 7, 1700. At a Meeting of the Governors and Visitors of the Free Schools." Bray ms. in Sion College Library, London. Copy in Library of Congress. Trustees present: Col. Charles Hutchins (Dorchester), FLETCHER 71

Robert Smith (Talbot), Thomas Tasker (Prince George's), Col. John Addison (Somerset), Maj. Edward Dorsey (Baltimore), Maj. William Dent (Charles), Col. John Thompson (Cecil), Lt. Col. Thomas Ennalls (Dorchester), Lt. Col. Thomas Smith (Kent). 33. Carr and Jordan, p. 278. 34. E. C. Papenfuse, A. F. Day, D. W. Jordan, and Gregory Stiverson, A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1889 (Balti­ more: Johns Hopkins( University Press, 1979), 1:374. 35. Archives 26:602. 36. Archives 24:179. 37. Archives 26:361. "An Act declaring the Peticionary Act relating to the ffree-holders[!] to be in force." 38. Archives 25:179. 39. Archives 26:616. 40. Archives 27:428. 41. Archives 29:66. 42. Archives 29:297. 43. Ethan Allen, p. 41. 44. Archives 29:159. 45. Archives 29:287. 46. Archives 29:299. 47. Perry, 4:76. 48. Archives 29:452. 49. Archives 30:41,42. 50. Archives 36:498-500. 51. "At a meeting of the Rector, Governors and Visitors of the Free Schools held in the city of Annapolis on Tuesday the 6th of September anno Domino 1715." Fulham Papers, reel!, vol. 2, nos. 221-22, in Library of Congress. Present: Rev. Joseph Colbatch, Rector, the Governor, Hon. Samuel Young, Hon. Philemon Lloyd, Rev. Henry Hall, Rev. William Hinderforch, Mr. William Bladen. 52. Gov. John Hart to Bishop Robinson, 20 June 1717. Fulham Papers, reel 1, vol. 2, nos. 227-28, in Library of Congress. 53. Archives 39:386, 387. See also Great Britain, Statutes ~f the Realm, 1819, vol. 5 (25 Carolus II, chap. 7, p. 793.) 54. Archives 30:373. 55. Archives 33:354; Morpurgo, pp. S8c64. 56. Archives 33:370. 57. Archives 33:629. See History of William and Mary, pp. 83-84, for list of students before 1720. 58. Archives 34:11. 59. Archives 33:59. 60. Archives 34:95. 61. Also Clerk or Registrar of St. Anne's Vestry. See St. Anne's Parish, Vestry Minutes, 1713-67 (in Hall of Records), p. 117. Mention of the scholars at King William's are so few that the following paragraph has interest: "It is the desire of the Minister, Vestry and Church wardens now mett together 72 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

that the School Master of Annapolis and the Charity Boys upon the Foun­ dation of the Schoole of Annapolis be permitted during the vacancy of the Assembly consent to Sitt in the Front seat joining the back door, till such time as further provision can be made for them." 5 Dec. 1721, p. 123. 62. Archives 34:302. 63. Archives 34:740-46. 64. For summary of taxes levied for benefit of free schools see Oswald Tilgh­ man, History of Talbot County, Md. 1661-1861 (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1925), pp. 462-65.

Notes to Two

1. Thomas Bacon, Laws of Maryland (Annapolis: Jonas Green, 1765), chap. vii. Chaps. 12 and 13 of the Act of 1696 established an Oxford and county schools but were superseded by the Act of 1723. 2. Archives 34:740-46 (Act of 1723). 3. Benedict Leonard Calvert to Thomas Hearne, 18 March 1728/29, in "Calvert Memorabilia," Maryland Historical Magazine, 11:282 (hereaf­ ter referred to as MHM). "Wee have here settled a fund for a free school in the several 12 Counties, which have mostly masters, but I think the Province too young for such a separated Scituation of Studies; I would rather the funds appropriated for these 12 schools were settled on our two older foundations, viz., one a free school at Annapolis and at Oxford, a convenient Town over our Bay. I should then hope for some real success of Education amongst us; two schools well provided of Masters were better than 12 indifferently suited with one each, and inconvenient for Scholars, there being no Towns or accomodation for Boarding Scholars, where those 12 schools are fixed." 4. Archives 36:357. 5. Archives 24:70; 36:551; Bacon, chap. xv. 6. Richard Lewis, "Verses To The Memory of His Excellency Benedict Leon­ ard Calvert." Ms. in Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy. 7. Bernard C. Steiner, "Benedict Leonard Calvert, Esq.," in MHM 3:192-200, 339-41. 8. Thomas Hearne, Remarks And Collections, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885-1921). Passages relevant to Calvert are in "Calvert Memora­ bilia," MHM 11:282-85, 339-41. In 1703 the Bishop of London tried to persuade Hearne to emigrate to Maryland to oversee the libraries given by Dr. Bray. Hearne refused. Later he twice refused offers to become librarian of the Bodleian. 9. Edward Holdsworth, Muscipula: The Mousetrap, or The Battle of The Camhrians And The Mice, translated into English by R. Lewis (Annapolis: William Parks, 1728). Reprinted in MHS Fund Publication no. 36, "Early Maryland Poetry," pp. 57-102. FLETCHER 73

10. J. A. Leo Lemay, Men of Letters in Maryland (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1972), p. 150. For life and works of Lewis see pp. 126-84. 11. Richard Lewis, "Verses ... ". 12. Archives 38:456-61 13. Archives 50:491. The Committee of Laws reported to lower house 21 May 1754 that interest on Calvert's Donation was £37 ten shiilings sterling; ground rents on houses in Annapolis 4.0 pounds sterling. The five hundred acres in Dorchester br,ought in no rent and cost ground rent; it was not sold until 1769. 14. Wills, Anne Arundel, 1732, 20:496, 498, in Maryland State Archives. For accounting of American estate, see Executor Edmund Jennings Testamen­ tary Bond, etc. Anne Arundel, 1732-34, box 37, folder 41; Additional Account 4 September 1753. In 1763 Gov. Sharpe wrote Calvert's brother, Caecelius, the English executor, to send the residue of what was owing King William's School still held in the estate of Jennings, who had died in England in 1756. 15. Archives 6:54, 55. Every freeholder was taxed 40 pounds of tobacco for support of the Anglican clergyman of his parish. This was commonly expressed as "40p per poll." 16. Nelson Richtmyer, Mmy/and's Established Church (Baltimore: The Church Historical Society for the Diocese of Maryland, 1956), p. 42. 17. Prior to Calvert's gift, St. Anne's Vestry Minutes record several attempts to provide decent housing for the rector, Samuel Skippon. The church wardens neither repaired two old parsonage houses nor built a new parsonage (MHM 7: 167). After Skippon 's death in 1724, Rev. James Henderson, commissary of the Anglican Church on the Western Shore, proposed to the vestry that he and the neighboring clergy "serve the Parish for the present year in the best manner they can on condition that his Excellency the Governor and the rest of the Vestry do agree that the 40p poll for the present year be apply'd toward purchasing glebe land and improving the glebe for the use of the present Incumbent and his successors" (MHM 7: 178). 18. But in the next meeting of the vestry, 11 February 1724/25 acandidate who had received the "bounty as a schoolmaster in Philadelphia" (Richtmyer, p. 193) was presented to them. His qualifications and their need must have coincided. Their reply was "Forasmuch as the Reverend John Humphreys is willing to reside among us, we readily accept his offer, and desire that his Excellency the Governor will induct him into this Parish" (MHM 7:269). The money saved through using the services of neighboring clergy after Skippon 's death was given him to defray "his Charges in Removing his Family to this City," and was not used to build a rectory. It is clear that they did not provide a place for him to live, because two years later in September 1726, Humphrey "acquainted this Vestry that he stands indebted for House rent twenty-four pounds currency" (MHM 7:279). He asked the church wardens to beg help "from the several parishioners toward Discharge of the Rent." On 4 August 1730 he was granted permission "to remove the house he built on the glebe lot," presumably at his own expense (MHM 8:157). 74 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

It is very likely that Rev. John Humphreys was both rector of St. Anne's and master of King William's School after Michael Piper died, and that he occupied the schoolhouse living quarters after 1730. By education and experience he was well able to hold both offices. The next rector, Rev. James Stirling, a poet and playwright, stayed only from 1739 to 1740, in which time Charles Peale was a master of King William's School. There are several hints that Rev. John Gordon, who became rector in 1745, lived in the schoolhouse quarters. Three times during his incumbency- 1 July and 18 August 1746 (MHM 9:50, 51) and 10 November 1747 (St. Anne's Vestry Minutes, p. 302)- the St. Anne's Vestry met in the schoolhouse. More significantly, he was host of the Tuesday Club in the schoolhouse. He, too, was well prepared by education to teach as well as to preach. See note 31. 19. Archives 6:54, 55. See note 17 for Henderson's proposal. 20. William F. Paynter, St. Anne's, Annapolis, History and Times (Annapolis: St. Anne's Parish, 1980), pp. 21, 22. 21. Archives 40:271 22. Archives 42:344, 354-55 23. Radoff, pp. 77-80. 24. Maryland Gazette 7 Nov. 1745; 21 Aprill747; 27 Sept. 1747; 2 June 1745. 25. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 150. 26. For the life of Bacon see Lemay, 303-42, and Tilghman, 1 :272-300; 2:477- 95. 27. For the life of Gordon see Mary M. Starin, "The Reverend Doctor John Gordon, 1717-1790," in MHM 75:167-91. 28. Alexander Hamilton, "History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday Club," opp. 118, ms. no. 2, John Work Garrett Collection, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, the Johns Hopkins University Library. 29. Ibid., pp. 119-23. 30. Ibid., p. 249. 31. Ibid., p. 368. 32. Archives 44:595-638. 33. Gazette,9, 16,23,30Dec.1747. 34. Archives 46:485, 486. 35. Archives 46:384, 385. 36. Gazette 1, 8 Aug. 1750. 37. Gazette 27 Feb. 1751. 38. Gazette 21 March 1754. 39. Gazette 16 May 1754. 40. Archives 50:514-19. 41. Archives 50:472, 473. 42. Archives 50:482, 483. 43. Archives 50:490-92. 44. Archives 50:xxii. 45. Archives 50:506. Alexander Hamilton was Grand Master of the Annapolis A. F&M Lodge as well as president of the Tuesday Club. FLETCHER 75

46. Archives 34:388. 47. Archives 6:56. 48. Archives 6:79, 80.

Notes to Three

1. "A Journal of the PrOceedings of the School" and "Book of Accounts" of King William's School are referred to in a suit brought by St. John's College to recover back rent and interest from the King William's School lease of Kentish House in 1769. See Chancery Records, March 1830, pp.l41 ff., 215-54, in Maryland State Archives. 2. See Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, An Appeal to the People a/Maryland, Annapolis, August 1868 (Annapolis: Robert F. Bonsall, 1868): Sollers in Steiner; Thomas Fell, Some Historical Accounts of the Founding of King William's School and its Subsequent Establishment as St. John's College (Annapolis, 1894); and "Establishment of a College," Archives 56:lxvi-lxviii; 58:lv-lviii; "Schools," 58:liv-lv. 3. George H. Callcott, A History of the University of Maryland (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1966), chap. 1; Morris Radoff, "King William's School," in Buildings, pp. 43-46; Tench Tilghman, "The Found­ ing of St. John's College," MHM 44:85·92. 4. Archives 64:242-53. 5. Malcolm may have helped write the college bill of 1750 (Gazette 8 August 1750); later the trustees of Queen Anne's County school dismissed him as master for writing a too elaborate curriculum. He was calledPhilo-Dogmati­ cus in the Tuesday Club (an earlier master of King William's School was called Mr. Pedanticus in the Ugly Club). He was Sharpe's appointee to the Commission on Boundaries to supervise the laying of the Mason-and-Dixon Line between Maryland and Pennsylvania because he was the ablest math­ ematician in Maryland (Archives 9:471,466, 224, 233; 14:556). He was the author of A Treatise of Musick, Speculative, Practical and Historical (Ed­ inburgh, 1721); A New System of Arithmetick, Theoretical and Practical (London, 1730); A Treatise of Bookkeeping . .. in the Italian method of Debtor and Creditor (London, 1731). For the most complete account of Malcolm see The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1980) 1:568. See also Lemay. 6. Gazette 1 and 8 August 1750. 7. Gazette 20 Nov. 1755. 8. Gazette 10 May 1759. 9. Gazette 20 Nov. 1755. 10. Clajon was undoubtedly aware of the curriculum taught at the Academy of Philadelphia, where the English "tongue" was taught grammatically and as "a language." Benjamin Franklin, "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania," Philadelphia, 1749, in Papers of Benjamin Frank­ lin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1959- ), 3:395-421. 76 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Franklin quotes copiously from John Locke's Treatise of Education, and William Fordyce's Dialogues. See also William Smith, A general Idea of the College ofMironia (New York: J. Parker and Weyman, 1753). 11. Gazette 28 Aprill757. 12. Gazette 10 May 1759. 13. Archives 9:375 (Calvert to Sharpe 17 March 1760). 14. Archives 9:402,277,438-39. Realizing that Sharpe was very much hurt by the scolding proprietary letter (seen. 13), Lord Baltimore sent an appeasing gift, a snuff-box bearing a Masonic device on its lid, a representation of Solomon's Temple. Sharpe hoped the gift "would convince at least one of my Enemies here who will see it and know from whom it come that all Attempts to prejudice me in his Lordship's Opinion have been very unsuc­ cessful." Undoubtedly there were freernasons in the lower house who were pressing for the two great interests of the lodge, the promotion of commerce and the education of the rising generation. Perhaps some of his enemies attended the Annapolis St. John's lodge, which was active throughout the middle sixties, years when the brigantine Free Mason lay between voyages in the Annapolis dock. 15. Archives 56:488-94. 16. Archives 56:496, 497. 17. Archives 9:523. 18. Archives 9:545. Lord Baltimore emphatically said he would not allow such a "strip of his right." 19. Archives 14:114 (Sharpe to Calvert, 21 August 1763). 20. Archives 58:309,310, 393; 4:402-4. 21. Archives 14:152. 22. Archives 14:194. 23. Archives 14:152, 153. 24. Gazette 30 May 1765. 25. Thomas Harrison Montgomery, "List of Scholars Entered at the Academy and College up to and Including the Year 1769," in A History of the University of Pennsylvania from its Foundation to A.D. 1770 (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs Co., 1900) pp. 530-54; see also University of Pennsylva­ nia, Biographical Catalogue of' the Matriculates of the College, 1749-1893 (Philadelphia, 1894 ). 26. Rev. Jonathan Boucher scorned the education received in American col­ leges. Of the College of Philadelphia and Princeton he wrote, "they were the chief nurseries of all that frivolous and mischievous kind of knowledge which passed for learning in America .... They pretend to teach everything, without being really competent to the teaching of anything .... Their chief and peculiar merit was thought to be in Rhetoric and the belles lettres ... Hence in no country were there so many orators, and so many smatterers." Virginia, according to him, was more guilty of appointing them as their rectors than Maryland, for "in Virginia the clergy were elected by the vestries ... in Maryland, they were in the prerogative of Lord Baltimore. But even in Maryland, congregations had influence on governors." Jonathan FLETCHER 77

Boucher, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist (New York: Kennikat Press, 1967), p.!Ol. 27. Archives 32:145, 146. Daniel Dulany was from Annapolis. The other three were from the Eastern Shore: Henry (Somerset County), Goldsborough (Dorchester), Hooper (Dorchester, member of county school board, be­ queathed ten pounds to King William School); see Papenfuse, et al., vol. 1. See also Archives 14:126 ("No Right without a Remedy"). 28. Archives 14:327, 328,, 29. Steiner, p. 42. 30. Gazette 22 May to 9 Oct. 1766. 31. See Gazette 7 Nov. 1768 for account of firing ofDakein. He and Rev. Bennet Allen learned that the Dulanys intended to replace them both with Rev. Jonathan Boucher, who could serve as both rector of St. Anne's and master of King William's. In defending Allen, Dakein thought he was defending Lord Baltimore's prerogative to appoint the clergy. The Gazette refused to publish Allen's unsigned letters delivered by Dakein. So the story of their troubles first appeared in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. Dakein lost his job, and Allen, who was thoroughly disreputable but had Lord Baltimore's backing, was awarded Maryland's most lucrative parish, in Frederick. 32. Daniel Dulany to Walter Dulany, 11 Oct. 1767 (Dulany Papers, MHS 1264). 33. Gazette 20 April 1769. An Act of 1750 gave them permission to sell. 34. Land Records of Dorchester County, Old no. 23, 1768-1770, pp. 228-92. An earlier attempt to sellS May 1764 failed; see Chancery Record 14:215 ff. 35. Gazette 6, 14 Sept. 1769. Books lost: Ferguson's Lectures on Astronomy and Philosophy; A Volume of Projectiles; Mather's Young Man's Compan­ ion; The Seaman's Calendar; Seaman's Daily Assistant. 36. Archives 62:4. 37. Archives 63:34, 35. 38. Archives 64:242-53. 39. Gazette 18 Nov. 1773. 40. Gazette 7 Apri11774, 26 May 1768. 41. Archives 64:379, 380 ("An Act for King William's School' in Annapolis"). 42. William Eddis, Letters from America (Cambridge :Harvard University Press, 1969). 43. Gazette 31 July 1776. 44. William Kilty, Laws of Mmyland (Annapolis: Frederick Green, 1799), 1 (June 1778), chap. 5, "Supplementary Act to the Act Entitled 'An Act for King William's School in Annapolis 1696."' 45. Kilty, I (1780), chap. 5, "An Act for calling out of circulation the quota of this state of bills of credit issued by congress, and the bills of credit emitted by act of Assembly." 46. Kilty, I (1780), chap. 24, "An act for licensing and regulating ordinaries." 47. William Smith, An Account of Washington College in the State of Maryland (Philadelphia: Joseph Cruikshank, 1784). 48. Archives 48:408, 409. 49. Gazette 26 August 1784. 78 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

50. Kilty, 1 (Nov. 1784), chap. 37, "An Act for founding a college on the Western Shore and constituting the same, together with Washington College on the Eastern Shore, into one University by the name of the University of Maryland." 51. Gazette 21 April 1785; see also "An Act to provide a permanent fund for the further encouragement and establishment of Washington College," in Kilty (1784), chap. 7. 52. Kilty (1785), chap. 2, "A supplement to the act entitled An 'Act for founding a college on the Western Shore, etc."' 53. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board ofVisitors and Governors, 28 Feb., I March 1786 (in St. John's Archives). 54. "An Act for Consolidating the Funds belonging to King William's School in the city of Annapolis with the Funds of Saint John's College: in Laws of Maryland made and passed at a session of Assembly 1785 (Annapolis: Frederick Green), chap. 39. 55. William Smith to Hon. Thomas Willing, Esq., President of the Bank of America, 5 March 1786, William Smith mss., vol.l, no.lOl, Archives, Historical Collection of the Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas.

Notes to Four

1. Poems by the late Doctor John Shaw, to which is prefixed a Biographical Sketch of the Author (Philadelphia and Baltimore, 1810), pp. 92-93. A short essay on the "Eloquence of St. Chrysostom: with a translation of a homily on patience" was published by Shaw in Port Folio, n.s. 3, no. 2 (1807), pp. 17-19. 2. Memorial Volume: Dedication Ceremonies in Connection with the Formal Opening of the Henry Williams Woodward Hall at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. (Annapolis, 1900), pp. 30, 31. 3. Steiner, p. 103 n. 4. Ibid. 5. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. "Freemasonry"; Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, s.v. "St. John As a Generic Term and As a Lodge Name"; Edward T. Schultz, Histm·y ofFreemasonry in Maryland, 4 vols. (Baltimore: Mediary, 1884), 1:389-90. 6. One Hundredth Anniversary, 1848-1948, Annapolis Lodge No. 89, A.F. and A.M. (Annapolis, n.d.), pp. 12, 13. 7. Generals Otto Holland Williams, John Swan, Mordecai Gist, Major Archibald Anderson, Capt. Stephen Decatur, Commodore James Nicholson, Col. Nathaniel Ramsey; see Schultz, 1:97-106. General Lafayette also visited Annapolis many times. 8. Schultz, 1:382,393,396,397. FLETCHER 79

9. William Smith, Ahiman Rezon, Abridged and Digested, As a Help to All That Are, or Would Be Free and Accepted Masons (Philadelphia, 1783), pp. 62,65,66,67,80,82,83. 10. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (New York: Modern Library, 1931), pp. 323-36. 11. Motto encircling the St. John's seal: "Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti" (No way impassable to courage). There are seven Masonic virtues: (1) discretion, the keeping of secrets; (2) obedience to the higher authorities of the order; (3) morality; (4) love for· mankind; (5) courage; (6) liberality; and (7) love of Death. See Tolstoy, p. 331. 12. Jacques Chailley, The Magic Flute, a Masonic Opera: an lntopretation of the Libretto and the Music (New York: Knopf, 1971), pl. 35, p. 130. 13. Coil's s.v. "St. John." 14. Lodge No.6 in Georgetown on the Sassafras and Lodge No. 17 at Chester­ town were founded in 1766. 15. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 2 July, 1793: "Resolved: that Bishop Carroll, Bishop Claggett, Mr. Nicholas Car­ roll, Dr. Scott, Mr. John Thomas, Mr. Jennings and Mr. Hanson, or any three, be a committee to attend at any time, when requested by the principal for the purpose of superintending a private examination of such students as shall be candidates for the first degree to be conferred, at a commencement to take place in November next." "Resolved: that the said committee be authorized to procure for the board one common public seal and likewise one privy seal with such devices and inscriptions as they shall think proper; the particular uses of the said seals to be hereafter ascertained, fixed and regulated by this board." 16. One Hundredth Anniversary, pp. 13, 14. 17. Smith, An Account of Washington College, p.2. Compare with Pierre Bezuhov's speech to the Petersburg lodge in 1809 (Tolstoy, p. 405). 18. Gazette 16 Dec. 1784. 19. For text of the Washington College charter of 1782 see Smith, Account pp. 5-14. Hereafter Washington College's charter will be cited as Charter of 1782; "Draught of a Proposed Act ... "will be cited as Draught or Proposed Act (Gazette 16 Dec. 1784); the Act bearing the same name as the Draught will be cited as the Charter of 1784, or the University Law (Laws of Maryland, Made and Passed at a Session of Assembly Begun and Held at the City of Annapolis, on Monday the first of November, in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty-Four [Annapolis, 1785], chap. 36). 20. William Smith to William White, 26 Jan. 1785. The Right Reverend William White Papers, val. I, no. 56, Archives Historical Collection of the Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas. 21. The John Carroll Papers, ed. Thomas O'Brien Hanley, 3 vols. (Notre Dame, 1976), 1:158. 22. Charter of 1782, paragraph 9:" ... and youth of all religious denominations and persuasions, shall be freely and liberally admitted to equal privileges and advantages of education, and to all the literary honors of the college, according to their merit, and the standing rules of the seminary, without 80 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

requmng or enforcing any religious or civel test whatsoever upon any student, scholar or member of the said college, other than such oath of fidelity to the state as the laws thereof may require of the Visitors, Gover­ nors, Masters, Professors and Teachers in Schools and seminaries of learn­ ing in general" (Smith, Account, p. I 0). Draught: "First, That the said intended college shall be founded and maintained for ever upon the most liberal and catholic plan for the benefit of the youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to the equal privileges and advantages of education and to all the literary honours of the college according to their merit, without requiring or enforc­ ing any religious or civil test or urging their attendance upon any particular religious worship or service, other than what they have been educated in, or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend: nor shall any preference be given in the choice of a principal, vice-principal, or any professor or master in the said college on a religious score; but merely on account of his literary and other necessary qualifications to fill the place, for which he is chosen," (Gazette 16 Dec. 1784). Charter of 1784:"II. Be it enacted, by the General Assembly of Maryland That a college or general seminary of learning, by the name of Saint John's, be established on the said western shore, upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles, namely; first the said college shall be founded and maintained for ever, upon a most liberal plan, for the benefit of youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to equal privi­ leges and advantages of education, and ,o all the literary honours of the college, according to their merit, without requiring or enforcing any reli­ gious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any particular religious worship or service, other than what they have been educated in or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend" (Laws of Maryland. 1785, chap. 36). 23. Smith to White, 26 Jan. 1785. Speaking of opposition to the Religious Bill in the General Assembly of 1785, Smith wrote "some men who call them­ selves Christians,- but I need not tell you, seem never to be Pleased with any Thing however Christian, or however Catholic, where their Numbers will not enable them to be the sole or chief Directors .... "In passing it is interesting to note that the word "Christian" never appears in either the 1782 or 1784 charter. 24. Smith to White, 26 Jan. 1785. 25. Archives 27:408-9. 26. For Carroll see John Carroll Papers, 1 :xlv-li; for Allison see John H. Gardner, Jr., First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore ... (Baltimore, 1966) and William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 9 vols. (New York: Carter, 1857-69), 3:257-63; for Smith see Horace W. Smith, Life and Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1879), I :22-28; 2:18-23, 34, 35, 2 vols. in I (reprint New York: Arno, 1972). 27. John Carroll Papers 1:80,81. 28. Gazette 30 Sept., 7 Oct., 21 Oct. 1784. 29. John Carroll Papers 1:82-143. FLETCHER 81

30. John Carroll Papers 1:112: "I procured a friend to examine the edition of Chrysostom's work belonging to the public library in Annapolis." The "public library"- known today as the Annapolitan Library or the Thomas Bray Collection- is in the possession of the St. John's College Library and is on deposit at the Maryland Hall of Records on the college campus. These are the volumes referred to in John Shaw's letter 24 Jan. 1807 (see note 16). 31. "To the Roman Catholics of the State of Maryland: Especially Those of St. Mary's County," Gazette 25 Nov. 1784. 32. John Carroll Papers 1:191. 33. John Carroll Papers 1:185, 186. Carroll wrote to Father Eden at the Academy of Liege, April 1785: "Do you know any young men of improved abilities and good conduct, capable of teaching the different branches of science with credit and reputation? It is now in contemplation to establish two Colleges in this state, open to Professors and Scholars of all denomina­ tions, and handsome appointments are to be annexed to the professorships. To me it appears, that it may be of much service not only to Learning, but to true Religion, to have some of these Professorships filled by R. C. men of letters and virtue; and if one or two of them were in orders, it would be so much the better.... " 34. MarylandJoumall5 July 1783, "To the Public"; 28 Oct. 1783, "To the Han. the General Assembly"; 26 Nov., 7 and 14 Dec. 1784, "To the People of Maryland"; 28 Dec. 1784, "A Design to Raise One Sect of Christians above Another." A restatement of these articles may be found in Allison, Candid Animadversions, cited in note 35. 35. Patrick Allison, Candid Animadversions on a Petition Presented to the General Assembly of Maryland by the Rev. William Smith and the Rev. Thomas Gates, First Published in 1783 ... by Vindex (Baltimore, 1793), pp. iii-v, 1-16. 36. University of Pennsylvania, Minutes of the Trustees of the College, Acad­ emy, and Charitable School (Wilmington, 1974), p. 91: "The Assembly of the Province having taken Mr. Smith into Custody, the Tru$tees considered how the inconvenience from thence arising to the College might be best remedied, and Mr. Smith having expressed a Desire to continue his Lectures to the Classes, which had formerly attended them, the Students also inclin­ ing rather to proceed on their Studies under his Care. They ordered that the said Classes should attend him for that Purpose at the usual Hour in the Place of his present Confinement.,. 37. H. W. Smith, 2:34, 35. 38. Schultz, 1:382-93: "When Bro. Smith removed to Maryland, he was the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and as all Lodges of Ancient York Masons in Maryland were under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, he was active in his official and other Masonic duties. The Lodges which had existed in Maryland prior to the introduction of the Lodges by the Ancients, were held under the authority of the Moderns, or other branch of the Masonic fraternity, and as these had now no ruling head in America, many of their members sought admission into the Ancient York Lodges. Brother Smith, and Brother John Coats, a Past Deputy Grand 82 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, who also resided at the time in Maryland, were deputed by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania on the 2nd of September, 1782, to take to their assistance such true brothers as they might see proper, and enter into the mysteries of Ancient York Masonry any respectable Modern Masons in Maryland who might desire to be so healed ... "See also Allison, p.3. 39. The sources of revenue are similar to those enacted for Washington College in "An Act to Provide'' a Permanent Fund for the Encouragement and Establishment of Washington College," Votes and Proceedings of the House of Delegates for the State of Maryland (Annapolis, 1783-85), pp. 15-18. 40. Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, 39 vols. (Washing­ ton, D.C., 1931-44), 22:17,18. 41. Ibid., 22:20. 42. Walter Bowie, James Brice, John Bullen, John Callahan, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, James Carroll, Nicholas Carroll, John Chalmers, J. Chase, Sam­ uel Chase, Abraham Claude, John Davidson, George Digges, Joseph Dow­ son, Joseph Eastman, Joshua Frazier, Thomas Gates, Alexander Golder, John Graham, T. Green, William Hammond, Alexander Hanson, Benjamin Harwood, Thomas Harwood, Wi11iam Harwood, Samuel Hughes, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Thomas Jennings, John Johnson, Rinaldo Johnson, Philip Key, James Mackubin, Nicholas Mancubbin, George Mann, David McMechen, John Muir, James Murray, Ben Oake, Aquila Paca, William Paca, George Plater, Edward Plowden, Allen Quynn, James Reid, Christo­ pher Richmond, Abasalom Ridgley, JohL Roger, Richard Sprigg, Charles Steuart, James Steuart, John Steuart, William Steuart, J.D. Stone, Thomas Stone, Michael Taney, Alexander Travers, James Tro(?), Charles Wallace, James Williams, Nathaniel Yates. Annapolis Subscription List, 16 Dec. 1784, in St. John's College Archives. 43. Draught: "Thirdly ... agents ... are hereby authorised and made capable to solicit and receive contributions and subscriptions ... of any person or persons, bodies politic and corporate, who may be willing t.o promote so good a design." Charter of 1784: "III.... and they are hereby authorised to solicit and receive, subscriptions and contributions . , . of any person or persons, who may be willing to promote so good a design." Draught and Charter of 1784: "Secondly, there shall be a subscription carried on in the different counties of the western shore, upon the plan on which it hath been opened, for founding the said college; and the several subscribers shall class themselves, according to their respective inclina­ tions, and for every thousand pounds current money which may be sub­ scribed and paid, or secured to be paid, into the hands of the treasurer of the western shore, by any particular class of subscribers, they shall be entitled to the choice of one person as a visitor and governor of said college .... " The addition of "bodies politic and corporate" allowed the King William's School to give £2000 and to qualify as two classes of subscribers, each of which could elect a member to the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College. FLETCHER 83

44. "Draught of a Proposed Act," Gazette !6 Dec. 1784: " ... and provided further, that is in three years from the first day of June 1785, there shall not be twenty-four visitors and governors chosen as aforesaid by classes of subscribers of one thousand pounds, each class; the other visitors and governors being not less then eleven duly assembled at any quarterly visitation, shall proceed by election to fill up the number of twenty-four visitors and governors, as they shaH think most expedient and convenient: provided nevertheless/that seventeen of the said visitors and governors shaH always be residents on the western shore of this state, but that the additional visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate the number of twenty­ four) may be chosen from this or any part of the adjacent states, if they are such persons as can reasonably undertake to attend the quarterly visitations, and are thought capable, by their particular learning, weight, and character, to advance the interest and reputation of the said seminary.... " Charter of 1784: "IV.... Provided always, that seventeen of the said visitors and governors shall be resident on the western shore of this state, but that the additional visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate the number of twenty-four) may be chosen from any part of this state, if they are such persons as can reasonably undertake the quarterly visitations, and are thought capable, by their particular learning, weight, and character, to advance the interest and reputation of the said seminary." 45. H. W. Smith, 2:249. 46. The History of American Methodism, 3 vols. (New York, 1964), 1:222. 47. Schultz, 1:105. 48. Votes and Proceedings of the House of Delegates of the State of Maryland, 1783-85 (Annapolis, 1785), p. 73. 49. William Morley Brown, George Washington, Freemason (Richmond: Gar­ rett and Massi!, 1952), p. 332. 50. Schultz, I :76-78; and Gazette 29 Dec. 1763: "Tuesday last, being St. John's was observed by the Brethren of the Ancient and Honarable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons with great order and decency." 51. Writings of G. W. 22:25-27. · 52. Gazette 30 March 1786. For earlier notices to subscribers see Gazette 9 June 1785 (no name at all, only reference to the Act); I Dec. 1785; 12 Jan. 1786. First eleven members of the Board of Visitors and Governors who were elected March 1786: Thomas Claggett, D.D., and William West, D.D. (Episcopal clergymen, who would later be elected bishops); subscribers on the Annapolis list of 16 Dec. 1784: Nicholas Carroll, John H. Stone, William Beans, Thomas Stone, Samuel Chase, Thomas Jennings, A. C. Hanson, John Thomas (a Quaker), and Richard Ridgeley. 53. Robert Reinhold, "For Relevance, the Students at St. John's College Turn to Galileo," New Yark Times, 18 Oct. 1971, p. 39. 54. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 12 and 13 May 1972. A branch college, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1963. 84 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Notes to Five

1. Rev. William Smith to Rev. William West, 5 May 1790, Maryland Diocesan Archives on deposit at the Maryland Historical Society (hereafter MDA). 2. Charles Goldsborough to John McDowell, Shoal Creek, 22 November 1790 (St. John's College LibraJY ). 3. Biographical Annals of Franklin County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: Genea­ logical Publishing Co., 1905), pp. 82, 83. 4. John M. McDowell, "John McDowell, LI.D., First President of St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland; Third Provost of University of Pennsylva­ nia," in Old Mercersburg, by the Woman's Club of Mercersburg, Pennsyl­ vania (New York: Frank Allaben Genealogical Co.,l912), pp. 69-71; and Stevenson Whitcomb Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture and Country Life, 1640-1840 (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1950), pp. 496-97. 5. Alfred Nevin, Churches of the Valley, and Historical Sketch of the Old Presbyterian Congregations of Cumberland and Franklin Counties in Penn­ sylvania (Philadelphia: James H. Wilson, 1852), p.l09. 6. Sprague, Vol. 3, p. 188. 7. Bureau of Land Affairs, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Warrant 81 (survey of 23 acres, 27 May 1767; survey of 158 acres, 17 March 1767). 8. Nevin,pp.lll, 112. 9. University of Pennsylvania, Biographical Catalogue, p.13, and Montgom­ ery, p. 544. Between 1771 and 1774 Montgomery was rector of St. Anne's Church in Annapolis. 10. See University of Pennsylvania, Minutes of the Trustees of the College, Academy and Charitable Schools, 1749-1851, p.33; University of Pennsyl­ vania, Biographical Catalogue, pp.l7-18; and Pennsylvania Archives, Fifth Series, 8 vols. (Harrisburg, 1906), 6:271, 281, 316. 11. See McDowell, passim. 12. Gazette 10 May 1786. 13. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 1786- 1825, 19 November 1790, St. John's College Archives. 14. John McDowell to William McDowell, 4 September 1789. In Gratz Collec­ tion, case 71, box 14, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter HSP). 15. Charles Goldsborough (congressman and governor); John Henry (U.S. senator); William Vans Murray (congressman and ambassador to the Hague); and William Tilghman (chief judge, third judicial circuit). 16. See, for example, Gov. John Henry, Letters and Papers (Baltimore: George W. King, 1904), pp. 26-27. 17. Papenfuse, et al., 1:396-97, 445; 2:834. 18. They were Thomas Hayward, Thomas Shaw, Henry Steels, Hall Harris, Christopher Harrison, Joseph Richardson, Howes Goldsborough, William Lockerman, William Shaw, William Sanders, John Sanders, Henry May­ nadier, John G. Harrison, Robert Goldsborough, William Goldsborough, FLETCHER 85

J. Campbell Henry, and John Shaw. See St. John's College, Matriculation Book, 1789-1860. 19. Judge Robert Goldsborough to Charles Goldsborough, 27 August 1795, MDA. 20. Gazette 23 May 1793. 21. Votes and Proceedings of the Senate ... November Session 1793, p.42. Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates ... November 1793 (hereafter JHD), p.l20. 22. JHD 1794, p.84. 23. Manumission of Joseph Williams, Gratz Collection, ABC, HSP. McDowell to Tilghman, 8, 16, 22 December 1806 and 9 March 1807. 24. McDowell to Rev. William Rogers, 20 December 1810, no. 671, University of Pennsylvania Guide; McDowell to Rogers, 30 January 1811, Gratz Collection, case 7, box 14, HSP. 25. Charles Goldsborough to Elizabeth and Anna Maria Goldsborough, I April and 14 May 1809, John Lweeds Bozman Papers, Library of Congress. 26. McDowell to Tilghman, 25 December 1815 and 15 February 1816, Tilgh­ man Papers, box 22, HSP. McDowell to Robert Henry Goldsborough, 27 December 1816, Goldsborough Papers, Myrtle Grove. 27. Alexander Contee Magruder to Bishop James Kemp, 29 June 1815, MDA. Kemp was offered the presidency of St. John's in 1807 but he refused, choosing instead to head an academy in Cambridge. See Kemp to John Trippe, 13 March 1807, MDA. 28. McDowell to Tilghman, 25 December 1815 and 15 February 1816, Tilgh­ man Papers, box 22, HSP; McDowell to Robert Henry Goldsborough, 27 December 1816, Goldsborough Papers, Myrtle Grove. 29. Magruder to[?], II July 1816, MDA. 30. Gov. Charles Goldsborough, Executive Letter Book, 1819-34, pp. 47-48, MSA. 31. McDowell to Tilghman, 23 March 1819 and 6 April 1820, Tilghman Papers, box 24, HSP. See also Robert H. Goldsborough to William Hemsley, 8 January 1810, Goldsborough papers, Myrtle Grove: "My sOns are now with Dr. McDowell and have been at Shoal Creek for a week." 32. McDowell left an estate worth $40,000 to brothers, sisters, nephews, and nieces, and his scholarly books to the University of Pennsylvania where one volume survives in the rare book room: Hemy Pemberton, A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (London, 1728). 33. See Francis Scott Key, A Discourse on Education Delivered in St. Anne's Church, Annapolis, After the Commencement of St. John's College, Febru­ ary 22d, 1827 (Annapolis: Jonas Green, 1827), pp. 33, 34; and Robert Henry Goldsborough, Address Delivered Before the Alumni of St. John's College at the Annual commencement on the 22 February, 1836 (Annapolis: Jonas Green, 1836). 34. St. John's College Archives.

Results of • St. John's Crossword Number One

For Crossword Number One the three winners of $35 book tokens, redeemable at the St. John's College Bookstore, are:

Tracy Cobbs, Martselle, AL Steven Epstein, Saratoga Springs, NY Elsie Roberts, Rhodesdale, MD

The winners were selected at random on July 8, from among thirteen entries. The editor wishes to inform the readers of the Review that he is not Cassandra. Nor is he Trout.

Solution to Crossword Number One

St. John's Crossword Number Two "Canonic Eponyms" By TROUT

In this puzzle there are nine answers for which no clues are given. (That there are nine of them provides an allusion for those who were students at the College before 1972.) They are all of a type, and must be deduced from the cross-checked letters and from the hint in the title. There is also a connection with the fourth essay in this issue. AU clued answers, except one proper but common noun, are in Webster's Ninth Collegiate DictionaJ)'·

For explanations of how to solve cryptic clues, new solvers are referred to the preface to Crossword Number One, in the previous issue. Once again, there will be three prizes of$35 book tokens redeemable at the St. John's College Bookstore, the winners to be chosen at random from among the entries. 90 ST. JOHN'S REVIEW

Across Down

6. Taxmen following letter lead to L Cherry swallowing it was native rulers (5) cheating (6) 10. Capital has fifty less after new 3. Radioactive old boats are places moon makes limited mental illness to socialize (7, two words) (9) . 4. Trunk of middleman with gold 12. Answer back with a bit of and thanks (5) temper and sound hoarse (7) 5. Adults mad about point are 14. General assembly from ample honored (7) numbers (6) 7. Very small, to say the least (7) 15. Causes theories (4) 8. Arab enters church for language 17. Inside tour in Albania is the group (7) place to go (6) 9. Multiple choice of colors (3) 19. The Spanish last month has no 13. Woman of letters (5) time for the Hebrew last month (4) 16. Unite wrongly and divide (5) 20. A nasty thing in man's attire never at first seems to be a woman 18. Two of our dead return without (7) right (3) 23. Experienced one's voice (in 22. Cunning boy! (3) principal) (5) 25. Transfer down and strung up (5) 24. Steadily reflects openings (5) 27. Plant pouch in God's acre (3) 26. Solid mistakes? Or fallacies? (5) 30. Rodent found in 'Toad Row,' 29. Tricky wicket not kosher, again misplaced (7, two words) (5) 31. Ingredients of Bacardi act near 33. Pitcher's stat points nullify an the heart (7) effect (5) 32. Hard going after top brass is a 35. The French, only part demon, certainty (5) are yellow (5) 33. That is retumed around virtue 38. Cuniculum is for weight (7) for superannuated tutors (7) 40. A worm turns. Hallelujah! (4) 34. Second person is star, we hear (3) 42. One leaves a debt, Father, for a sheep (6) 37. Organ was melancholy (6) 43. Result of thesis-writing shows 41. Cooperative in Russia, later in immorality (4) disjointed (5) 45. To spoil liquor is the limit (6) 44. Undergarment's a little black (3) 46. This time the Frence stand by for the Scotch sign (7) 47. Mineral yields prophet in the time of end (9) 48. Penetrating accent (5) TROUT 91

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28 29 30 31 32 33 34

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48 49